Friday - July 24, 2015

Fallout: NV - Total Conversion Fallout: Project Brazil Release Soon

by Gorath, 00:04

The developers intend to release their Fallout: Project Brazil total conversion before Fallout 4 comes out. It's currently in beta. Here's what it's about, and the new intro at the bottom of the newsbit.

This is a near Total Conversion for Fallout: New Vegas. Fallout: Project Brazil adds an all new story around a new player character, an adopted resident of Vault 18, embarking on a quest to a hidden complex in the ruins of Los Angeles. Along the way you'll discover a pitched battle between the Survivalist Army, the New California Republic, and The Super Mutants, which shapes the politics and events leading to the NCR's invasion of the Mojave. The story takes place in 2260 - many years before the "Courier" awakes in New Vegas, while the Enclave struggles to rise again on the West Coast.

The Mod branches off from New Vegas right from the New Game menu. The game will be released in chapters, with the first release containing 3 parts. The full campaign will contain 16 Main Quests and several side stories, all related to the player's journey through Vault 18 and the wasteland of San Bernardino. Their choices at each stage will shape the next, creating 2 plathroughs worth of unique content.

The download of the First Installment comes with a custom installer package containing a few optional add-ons for your game, like the SGhi.info REVELATION Interface, and DLC compatibility patches.

The game features several hours of new exploration and game play, with each branch of the story telling a new tale for repeat playthroughs.

Thursday - June 25, 2015

Fallout: NV - Modding FNV to Make it Look Like Fallout 4

by Myrthos, 12:51

Rock, Paper, Shotgun has an article up in which the author attempt to find the mods needed to make Fallout New Vegas look somewhat like Fallout 4. The author presents the article not as a guide, but as a discussion item.

For context, I barely played Fallout: New Vegas upon release because, despite sterling wordsmiths Obsidian handling it, I found Fallout 3’s engine and especially combat too distractingly wonky to deal with. As much as I wanted to I just couldn’t lose myself to the wasteland, because the wasteland looked and felt like Team America recreating Riverdance on some mudflats. Half a decade later, I can avail myself of the many mods aimed at resolving just that, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll finally be able to enjoy a game that half the internet is madly in love with. I’ll think about survival, difficulty and new campaign mods some other time: this is about seeing if I can find a way into to the game Obsidian made.

After many and varied types of fiddling, there were three and a half tools I needed before I could meaningfully get going. The first was Fallout Mod Manager, one of several rival tools for (un)installing and managing legions of FNV add-ons. Even that is split into two different forks, which is where the aforementioned half a tool comes in. The most recent ‘official’ FMM is available here, but you’ll almost certainly need to install the 4GB RAM usage patch on top of that. So I went for this custom build which has that built in already, but is only available via (free) registration for the Lovers Lab forum (a place which I should probably warn you is festooned with assorted nudey mods, so possibly NSFW and all that, although the FMM thread itself is clean).

Fallout: NV - Interview with Chris Avellone @ Core-RPG.Net

Is it true that in the process of the development a substantial part of the Caesar's Legion content has been cut out? In the final version of the game Legion occupied only a few settlements and a large part of its quests were "evil" counterparts of NCR quests, whereas the latter had many unique quests, not connected with Legion directly. Was it possible to develop the game in a way that both sides would have been represented more or less equally or inequality had been planned right from the start?

To the last question — yes, it was possible to develop both sides, and I agree that NCR felt more prominent in New Vegas, design-wise and scope-wise, than the Legion. While I wasn’t involved with the faction design and divisions in New Vegas (I was mostly companions, some major NPCs like the Legate, the graphic novel, and some end slide work), our lead writer, John Gonzalez, and I did kick around thoughts on Caesar’s role and characterization as well as the structure of his presentation when the player meets him, and I shared the backstory on a number of Legion references in dialogues that herald back to tribes we developed way back when for the first iteration of Van Buren (Hangdogs, Twisted Hairs). I always felt that Caesar’s goals were going to die once he ran out of lands to conquer — he had a war machine, and once it stopped rolling, the other societal problems his faction had at their core would surface and they would tear themselves apart… or simply decay until they became the prey of someone else.

In addition, we did want to include a Legion companion, Ulysses, who would be tolerant of Legion behavior and provide an internal perspective on it, but he got moved to the DLCs as an antagonist. My feelings on the Legion were summed up both with him, and also in a conversation tangent with Rose of Sharon Cassidy, where she inadvertently peppers her anger at the Legion with a slow, grudging respect for some of the other benefits they bring when they conquer an area (protecting caravans, uniting tribes, keeping the peace). In many ways, the Legion is better adapted for the wastes than many of the other factions.

When Bethesda released Fallout 3, it was praised by the majority of players, but quite a substantial group of people not only disliked the game, they hated it and the developer for ruining the series. However, when the next Fallout from Obsidian appeared on the shelves they had a change of heart and named it "the true Fallout”. Along with this, there is a notion that New Vegas is nothing more than a global modification for Fallout 3. Can you think of the changes that made your game more alike the Fallout that the fans of the classic two games had waited?

Different opinions for different folks, I suppose. Personally, I enjoyed Fallout 3 and have said as much, and Bethesda not only did a great job, but they also did a great job of reintroducing players to the Fallout world. I liked Fallout 1 and 2 as well. Hell, all three were fun.

In terms of feel, the locale of New Vegas makes a difference, since the physical proximity of the Mojave wasteland to Fallout 1 and 2 made hooking into some past F1 and F2 world elements easier. This allowed for…

Continuing the story with nostalgic factions — for example, you got to see more about NCR and how they were fucking up the world.

Callbacks to events and locales (New Reno, as a simple example) that were in F1 and F2 from locals and travelers were easier to do and made sense.

Callbacks to old pals from F2 (Marcus, Cassidy's daughter) and a continuation of similar technologies (Cyberdogs).

Creature callbacks to F2 (Geckos).

A companion design structure which was a lot like F2's structure. This wasn't a proximity choice, this is just something we do as a studio.

Monday - May 25, 2015

Fallout: NV - 'Dust' Mod

With rumors about a potential Fallout 4 reveal flying fast and furious in the lead-up to Bethesda’s first-ever E3 press conference, one mod promises to breathe new life into New Vegas’ aging post-apocalyptic landscape. It’s called DUST Survival Simulator, and it replaces New Vegas’ quest-based structure with a single, seemingly insurmountable goal: just stay alive.

According to naugrim04, DUST’s author, “DUST is a Post-Apocalyptic survival simulator” that “completely overhauls nearly every aspect of the game to better represent an apocalyptic survival-horror atmosphere.” In DUST, supplies are limited, and the environment much harsher. Players will starve to death, or die due to dehydration (“Don’t go to bed thirsty,” naugrim warns. “You will die.”), while food and water are hard to find. Ammo is scare, and combat is incredibly punishing. Don’t worry too much, though: if food becomes too hard to come by, cannibalism is an option.

There is a story in DUST, but players “are not the main character,” and the story will unravel primarily via environmental clues, a la Portal or Left 4 Dead. DUST players can “win” by escaping the desert, but the exit is hidden, and reaching it isn’t easy: naugrim himself can’t finish the game without cheating via the Fallout 4 console. Don’t expect previous New Vegas playthroughs to help, either. Naugrim changed the topography, the NPCs, and some of the graphics. Not everything’s brand new in DUST, but much of it is.

In order to install DUST, players need a copy of Fallout: New Vegas, the game’s three story DLC packs, and a handful of supporting mods. Look for more information at DUST’s official NexusMods page.

Saturday - April 25, 2015

Fallout: NV - Interview @ Core-RPG

Is it true that in the process of the development a substantial part of the Caesar's Legion content has been cut out? In the final version of the game Legion occupied only a few settlements and a large part of its quests were "evil" counterparts of NCR quests, whereas the latter had many unique quests, not connected with Legion directly. Was it possible to develop the game in a way that both sides would have been represented more or less equally or inequality had been planned right from the start?

To the last question — yes, it was possible to develop both sides, and I agree that NCR felt more prominent in New Vegas, design-wise and scope-wise, than the Legion. While I wasn’t involved with the faction design and divisions in New Vegas (I was mostly companions, some major NPCs like the Legate, the graphic novel, and some end slide work), our lead writer, John Gonzalez, and I did kick around thoughts on Caesar’s role and characterization as well as the structure of his presentation when the player meets him, and I shared the backstory on a number of Legion references in dialogues that herald back to tribes we developed way back when for the first iteration of Van Buren (Hangdogs, Twisted Hairs). I always felt that Caesar’s goals were going to die once he ran out of lands to conquer — he had a war machine, and once it stopped rolling, the other societal problems his faction had at their core would surface and they would tear themselves apart… or simply decay until they became the prey of someone else.

In addition, we did want to include a Legion companion, Ulysses, who would be tolerant of Legion behavior and provide an internal perspective on it, but he got moved to the DLCs as an antagonist. My feelings on the Legion were summed up both with him, and also in a conversation tangent with Rose of Sharon Cassidy, where she inadvertently peppers her anger at the Legion with a slow, grudging respect for some of the other benefits they bring when they conquer an area (protecting caravans, uniting tribes, keeping the peace). In many ways, the Legion is better adapted for the wastes than many of the other factions.

Read the lnk above for more good questions, and answers about it's development.

Saturday - March 21, 2015

Fallout: NV - Project Brazil Development

by Couchpotato, 04:17

I don't know if many of you remember the total conversion mod for Fallout: NV called Project Brazil that was released back in 2013. After a one year hiatus the developer is trying to finish the second part called "Night in Pinehaven."

So 2014 pretty much blew past in the blink of an eye, and while a lot of work was done, we kinda fell off the rails there for a while. But! We've been back online for a while now and began making progress. We have the story in the GECK, some interesting new plot twists, and a long way to go.

If you were to go back to 2011 and tell me that in 2015 I'd still be working on Fallout: Project Brazil, I'd probably have a heart attack. That is a long time to be working on anything. But, as history shows, here we are.

We are currently down to just two coders, one of which is our venerable RickerHK from the 1st Installment, and our other mate only drops by every few months or so. We lost Freddie to the responsibilities of real life, along with Marco.

That leaves us with a bit of a problem, since I, Brandan Lee, am not a programmer. I chose to play a 3D Art & Designer cross class character and rolled a 4 on programming. That means that after Level Design and Quest Dialogue Writing are finished, I get to sit on the bench and be a cheerleader.

When I open my email in the morning, my heart either soars or gets crashed depending on whether there is a team update waiting or not.

Tuesday - November 25, 2014

Fallout: NV - Fallout: Lonestar is Avellone-approved

I think New Vegas is enough of a favorite around here that a big new mod counts as news -- especially when it's one that Christopher Avellone has given his seal of approval. Hereisthecity reports:

Christopher Means set out to initially create a mod for the game that was just going to be a single town in his native Texas.

When Means attended GDC in Austin he met Chris Avellone, one of the designers for Fallout: New Vegas, and pitched his mod idea to the developer. Avellone was taken by the idea and convinced Means to broaden the project's scope, and even helped him recruit more Fallout community members to work on the mod.

Now the mod is looking more like a fully-fledged game project...

Most amazingly of all, this is an indie game project that does not appear to be asking for your money ahead of time.

Tuesday - September 09, 2014

Fallout: NV - RPG Backtrack @ RPGamer

Of course there are people and things to shoot around New Vegas, but this most recent incarnation of the Fallout universe doesn't stop there. Enjoy going down the Vegas Strip and taking in all its scenic delights between the killing sprees in the desert.

Fallout: NV - Retrospective @ Enthusiacs

While the open world flavor has been preserved, and even expanded upon due to Obsidian’s expansive and impressive display of the Fallout universe (FYI most, if not all, of the Obsidian team committed to Fallout New Vegas are former Black Isle Studio members. The original creators of the Fallout brand), the technical issues are a detriment to the series. While I am hopeful that the future will look brighter for future Fallout games now that Bethesda has done away with their Gamebryo engine for the better looking (if still flawed) Creation Engine, Fallout New Vegas is a game that is far from perfect.

And yet, far from being a bad experience. The story, the side-stories I should say, will hopefully leave that lasting and indelible mark upon the players that experience them. Forget politics, forget devious machinations and personal vaunts of egotistical supremacy that reside within the main story.

Give me more of this. Give me more of its beating heart and soul. Give me more of its unexpected surprises. That is something I personally hope to see in the tomorrow. Because more of that gives me hope for a better, and unquestionably brighter, Fallout future.

“FALLOUT: LANIUS CROSSROADS” ANNOUNCED

‘FALLOUT: LANIUS CROSSROADS’ is a new ‘Micro-Short’ from the award winning team behind ‘FALLOUT: LANIUS’. The film will launch in early 2014, being released to Crowd Funders first. It is expected that a larger project will be announced sometime in 2014.

The film is a small offering, designed to thank both the gaming and Fallout communities that have supported the team. Director Wade K. Savage commented, “This little film is our way of saying thank you. It’s a more Classic Fallout adventure – and we know Fallout Fans new and old will love it”.

No release date has been announced, as the team is currently working on a myriad of different projects. “What we can say” Savage continued “Is that this film will connect to a much larger picture. When we are ready to speak about it, you will know everything there is to know. Including if we do another crowd funding campaign”.

“FALLOUT: LANIUS” was launched in august and smashed 100,000 views in 24 hours. It was covered globally.

Thursday - December 05, 2013

Fallout: NV - Editorial @ HardcoreGamer

by Couchpotato, 03:47

HardcoreGamer has posted a new article asking the great question that most of us still can't agree on. The quesion I'm talking about is whether Fallout 3 or Fallout:NV is better.

It’s clear that Fallout: New Vegas is without a doubt the better game, but I’ll always have a soft spot for Fallout 3. Of course, an extremely iterative sequel like Fallout: New Vegas will usually win in a head to head matchup like this. Obsidian was able to take everything that was great about Fallout 3 and bring their own strengths to the table to create a game that is quite simply better in almost every way. However, if I think about what game I enjoyed more, it’s probably Fallout 3. Fallout 3 was a much more “important” game, being the revival of a classic series and the first game made in this style. The revelatory experience of playing Fallout 3 for the first time back in 2008 is one that could never be recreated. Playing Fallout: New Vegas for the first was much less of an event, it simply felt like a slightly improved version of Fallout 3. So, while the people that played Fallout 3 first (including myself) probably got more enjoyment out of it than New Vegas, there is really no denying that Fallout: New Vegas is the better of the two.

Wednesday - July 17, 2013

Fallout: New Vegas - Fan Film Teased

by Couchpotato, 02:03

PCGAMER has an article talking about a new fan film called Lanius based on Fallout NV.

You may remember clashing with the overly gruff Monster of the East in one of Fallout: New Vegas’ endings. Legate Lanius—whose name is Latin for “butcher,” naturally—wasn’t terribly complex beyond being New Vegas’ token Bad Guy, but a fan film is seeking to change that by attempting to color in his backstory. This here is the first teaser for the fan film Fallout: Lanius, which is debuts this weekend.

Haven’t played New Vegas? How convenient, then, that Steam is currently selling it for a mere $2.50. You won’t need to overly familiar with the wasteland to appreciate this high-concept action flick, however.

Lanius’ origin story is a lovingly put-together project by filmmaker and gamer Wade K. Savage, with the likes of New Vegas writer Chris Avellone being amongst those who donated to its crowdfunding campaign last year. While this teaser doesn’t reveal very much at all, it won’t be long till we learn fully about Lanius’ frenzied ascension to brutality—the world premiere happens this Saturday at PAX Australia.

Saturday - July 13, 2013

Fallout: New Vegas - Fan Film "Red Star"

by Couchpotato, 01:25

Machinima has posted the full length fan film that is based on the Fallout series. The film is around 30 minutes so kickback, and relax while watching it.

As its description reads, as the Ranger makes his way through the wasteland, his purposefully solitary life is interrupted when he is faced with an important choice: remain safely anonymous or become known as a hero? Set between the time periods of the original fan film and season one of Fallout: Nuka Break, Red Star is a dark look into the makings of a legend. Enjoy!

Monday - June 17, 2013

Fallout: New Vegas - Cut Material

When Ulysses was still a companion in the game, he was indeed meant to be recruitable at the location that became Wolfhorn Ranch, as some people have guessed from the fact that the location was called "Ulysess' camp" in some localized versions of the game. This version of Ulysses would actually not be open about his allegiance with the Legion, but rather try to gently steer the character to more pro-Legion views while offering commentary of the various locations and events of the game. Ulysses would only openly admit his pro-Legion beliefs when dealing with a Legion-affiliated PC.

The Black Mountain location was meant to play a larger role in the NCR/Legion conflict at one point, with factions interested in controlling it due to its satellite system (the NCR to expand their broadcast range and the Legion to use as a jamming system). Digging through the files of the game one can still find some references to a quest that involved blowing up the satellite dishes that was tied to that older design of the area.

Wednesday - May 29, 2013

Project Brazil - To Be Released May 31st

by Couchpotato, 00:24

Fallout: Project Brazil is a free fan-made expansion for Fallout: New Vegas. In fact it has been over four years in the making. The mod will be released in three installments one after the other if everything goes as planned.

Project Brazil tells the story of your player character, an adopted resident of Vault 18, on the night of the last big Vault-Ball game of the season. The consequences of your player’s decision to dodge or tackle Johnny Matheson shapes the rest of their life, playing as an computer Nerd or a popular Athlete. When the war finally reaches the Vault after one prominent figure turns out to be a member of the Enclave, a civil war erupts overnight, forcing the player to pick a side and escape into the wasteland with their rag-tag party of Robots and Friends.

Sunday - January 13, 2013

Fallout: New Vegas - Project Brazil Prequel Mod

by Dhruin, 01:26

Project Brazil is a "near Total Conversion" mod that serves as a prequel to the story of New Vegas. A surprisingly good intro trailer has been released and the first installment is due for release this month:

This is a near Total Conversion for Fallout: New Vegas. Fallout: Project Brazil adds an all new story around a new player character, an adopted resident of Vault 18, embarking on a quest to a hidden complex in the ruins of Los Angeles. Along the way you'll discover a pitched battle between the Survivalist Army, the New California Republic, and The Super Mutants, which shapes the politics and events leading to the NCR's invasion of the Mojave. The story takes place in 2260 - many years before the "Courier" awakes in New Vegas, while the Enclave struggles to rise again on the West Coast.

The Mod branches off from New Vegas right from the New Game menu. The game will be released in chapters, with the first release containing 3 parts. The full campaign will contain 16 Main Quests and several side stories, all related to the player's journey through Vault 18 and the wasteland of San Bernardino. Their choices at each stage will shape the next, creating 2 plathroughs worth of unique content.

The mod's first installment should be released in January.

Fallout: Project Brazil requires no DLC or additional downloads. Just Fallout:NV, right out of the box.

The story features:

An Alternate Start in Vault 18 with a new Childhood Story and Escape A very large worldspace in California - Black Bear Mountain National Forest An epic battle between The Super Mutants, The Survivalists, and The New California Republic A small Wasteland by the Ocean in Santa Monica, California A Pirate Radio Station Giant Robot Armies Epic Battles Inter-Dimensional Travel Hacking Zombies And A Ruined Underground City called "Project Brazil!"

[This mod has nothing to do with the country of Brazil. No, seriously, it's not The Country of Brazil. I swear. Project Brazil is a working title. The artistic form and story themes are heavily influenced by the Monty Python veteran Terry Gilliam, the classic 1985 film "Brazil."]

Friday - October 12, 2012

Polygon at the Verge has an editorial based on a presentation that Chris Avellone did at GDC Online Panel. In it, he talks about how Obsidian "expanded the Fallout: New Vegas universe with 10,000 lines of dialogue". As always, a snip:

The studio had to streamline the voice-over recording process as much as possible to stay under budget. That process involved sending casting directors extensive rundowns on specific characteristics Obsidian desired for each voice actor. They then worked with the actors to give as much background on the characters in as little a time as possible, and passed along a script that had been annotated to provide important context to dialogue — things like intended tone and pronunciations of esoteric terms were bracketed, and placed in the script.

Saturday - September 08, 2012

Fallout: New Vegas - Still Playing @ Edge Online

I’m always averse to finishing stories in games when the world you’re presented with is far more enticing than any tale playing out within it. A lot of this is down to my lack of enthusiasm for vanquishing evil forever and ever until a sequel appears, and my inability to suspend disbelief when narrative events allow me to single-handedly decide the fate of entire societies locked in endless, self-sustaining wars. Personally, I’m much happier finding my own path to zen by wandering a game’s geography and exploring the limits of its mechanics.

Fallout: New Vegas is about as perfect an example of this sort of game as you could hope to find. I’m still playing it precisely because I refused to take a role in its prescribed endgame, where the gritty world unfurls a host of gritty decisions to make over which gritty faction gets control. Having been through Fallout 3’s cartoony wrap-ups, I don’t think there’s going to be a satisfactory tying up of the game’s narrative strands. Some might say that choosing the most palatable conclusion from a bad bunch is the point of New Vegas, but having spoiled all the endings for myself (to no overall loss of satisfaction), I decided to define my own endgame by taking to the wasteland as an agent of justice, creating an endless, noble quest of subsistence that'll last as long as my actual, natural life.

Friday - August 17, 2012

Fallout: New Vegas - Uncut Version Mods

by Myrthos, 12:40

Modmaker Moburma has made an overview of the mods he created to restore the cut elements from Fallout: New Vegas. Usually things are cut from a game because they are buggy, incomplete or simply do not fit in one way or the other, so having these mods might not make it a better game (although quit a few things have been fixed by the mods), but at the very least you have the option now to find that out. The series involve a total of nine mods.

Wednesday - May 16, 2012

Fallout: New Vegas - J.E. Sawyer "Hardcore" Mod v4

Yeah, I don't have a good excuse for why it took me this long to update the JSawyer mod. But the battle.net outage gave me a nice chunk of time to fix up a few things. Updating the mod should not conflict with your current save games, but what do I know?

Monday - April 09, 2012

Fallout: New Vegas - DLC: Continuing the Story

They knew the player was a courier, often delivered dangerous packages, and had traveled out west into the Mojave desert. Obsidian wondered what would have happened had the Courier delivered their package rather than being shot and having it stolen before the game began. That single, successful delivery would have completely changed the scope and layout of the entire Mojave Wasteland. Avellone and his team wondered about all the other side quests in New Vegas, and what if even a small percentage of them had the same world-shattering impact? That's when the team began to get excited about the four DLC packs.

Business sucks, alright? It's cold and rigid and occasionally unfair. Such is the case with Obsidian's Fallout: New Vegas contract with Bethesda, wherein the developer only received royalties if the game matched or exceeded an 85 rating on Metacritic. Leaving aside the fact that Metacritic is a woefully unbalanced aggregation of review scores from both vetted and unvetted publications, agreements like this can leave indie studios -- like Obsidian -- in the lurch should that Metacritic score just barely miss the mark.

Unfortunately for Obsidian, Fallout: New Vegascurrently has a Metacritic average of 84, a single point below the average that would've earned the company royalties on its product. "[Fallout: New Vegas] was a straight payment, no royalties, only a bonus if we got an 85+ on Metacritic, which we didn't," Obsidian creative director and co-owner Chris Avellone told one Twitter user.

Validating all choices specifically does not mean that they should all be subjectively equal. I gave two examples of "good" choice agony from Greek tragedy: Orestes and Antigone. Both of these characters have two choices for one decision. The choices have good aspects and bad aspects, but they are not "six of one / half a dozen of the other". The values implied by each choice are subjective. There is not a single right thing to do for each character: both choices contain virtue and sacrifice -- and both are valid. Validation also does not need to come through mechanics, though using something like reputation or influence (i.e. an Indirect Reaction System) can make an abstracted validation easier than hand-scripting specific benefits and drawbacks to every choice.

With the introduction of the Ultimate Edition Bethesda Softworks presents the definitive edition of Fallout: New Vegas®. This complete package, which includes the Dead Money, Honest Hearts, Old World Blues and Lonesome Road add-on packs, allows you to experience everything that New Vegas has to offer. To sweeten the pot, you'll be armed with the latest cache of unique weapons, ammo types and recipes from the most recent add-on packs Courier's Stash and Gun Runners Arsenal.

You'll find there are more friends – and enemies – to make whether you're a seasoned explorer of the Mojave, or playing the game for the first time. You'll discover there are also more consequences to be responsible for, and more opportunities to live in glory – or infamy – throughout the Wasteland. The choices you make will be as influential as ever.

Enjoy your stay.

Note that the game is now available in North America, it will be made available on February 10th throughout Europe.

Sunday - February 05, 2012

Fallout: New Vegas - The Rhythm of the Quest

by Dhruin, 01:39

Joystiq has a piece titled The Rhythm of the Quest in Fallout 3 and New Vegas that argues Fallout 3 has more "rhythm" variation than New Vegas, which makes for a better game. As far as I can tell, this boils done to preferring the exploration in FO3 over F:NV - beyond that, I'm not sure I follow the argument. A bit on the underlying premise:

Video games have a certain rhythm to them. Really, they have several different rhythms to them. Musician and critic Kirk Hamilton has written eloquently on the subject, focusing on the moment-to-moment rhythms of games. But there's also a broader rhythm, which comes down to what you spend your time on overall. In Gears Of War, it's simple. You start a fight, you win the fight, reinforcements appear, you beat them, you explore the area, you move along, watch a cutscene, and then pick another fight to start the rhythm again. RPGs have these rhythms too, usually based around quest structure.

The conventional quest rhythm of the modern RPG started with the original Fallout, back in 1997, as so many things did. It was refined by BioWare in Knights Of The Old Republic, and in multiple MMRPGs. The game's main quest guides your character to a central location – a hub – usually a town, where multiple characters offer you quests. If you're like me, you load up on as many of these as possible, and then try to clear them up as efficiently as possible.

Fallout: New Vegas - Ultimate Edition Trailer

This complete package, which includes the full version of Fallout: New Vegas as well as the Dead Money, Honest Hearts, Old World Blues and Lonesome Road add-on packs, allows you to experience everything that New Vegas has to offer. To sweeten the pot, you’ll be armed with the latest cache of unique weapons, ammo types and recipes from the most recent add-on packs Courier’s Stash and Gun Runners Arsenal.

Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate Edition will be available in retail stores across North America on February 7th 2012 and throughout Europe on February 10th.

Sunday - January 01, 2012

Fallout: New Vegas - Review @ TruePCGaming

I’m shivering a bit while watching the credits for New Vegas roll by, and it’s hard not to feel like I just finished the best game of this generation. It’s also hard not to blame such high praise on the simple measure of its longevity. New Vegas took me 250 hours to finally put down, with most of that time spent playing my second character. Two-hundred and fifty hours, man. Think of the things I could’ve done with that time.

What was it that kept me going? The small stuff. New Vegas has all the ambition, scope, and possibility that Bethesda’s grandiose RPG engine can provide, but is written by the same staff that brought us the mature and detailed writing of Planescape, Baldur’s Gate, and the old-school Fallouts. It’s a stellar combination. Though New Vegas is almost the same game as Bethesda’s version of Fallout, Obsidian’s interpretation of what it means to be an RPG couldn’t be more different. Just note how many more dialogue options you have with a light switch than you do with Ulfric Stormcloak.

Friday - December 30, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - J.E. Sawyer "Hardcore" Mod Released

by Dhruin, 00:59

J.E. Sawyer has released his personal mod for Fallout: New Vegas, intending to make the game more challenging and address some inconsistencies with karma and alignment. This isn't an "unofficial patch" (or an official one, for that matter) and isn't intended to fix bugs or add content.

Here's the short version of the changelog from his Formspring postings (full notes are included with the file):

It's mostly general balance adjustments I couldn't do for various technical/time reasons, plus some general "make the Hardcore game harder" adjustments. I've made a couple hundred adjustments, but the most significant are probably:

* Max level with all DLCs installed is 35. * XP rate is halved. * Base player health is quartered and level-gained health is reduced by 25%. * Base Carry Weight from 150 to 50 (related perks/things have also been adjusted). * Energy Weapon ammo weighs less than its nearest equivalent Guns ammo. * Energy Weapon durability is in the same ballpark as Guns durability. * Medium Armor has a small amount of DR proportional to its DT. * Heavy Armor has even more DR proportional to its DT. * Power Armor does not require a perk, but if you have the perk, the weight of the armor is essentially negated. * Karma/Alignment values adjusted all over. * H2O/FOD/SLP rates doubled, but the first threshold is moved from 200 to 400 (statuses roll over ever 150 after). * Water and Food drop rates on NPCs is dramatically lower. It is difficult to stay out of Dehydration/Starvation by looting enemies. * Water/Nuka-Cola/Sunset Sarsaparilla heal much less, but now all restore H2O (alcohols will as well, but at lowered values). * Default Stimpaks are uncommon. A new variant, Stimpak, Expired is the default. It is not that great. * The player's Workbench recipe now makes Stimpak, Homemade. It is better than Expired, worse than default Stimpaks, and has the PE penalty from Healing Powder. * All Stimpaks have weight. * Pre-Order items have been adjusted to be more well-balanced and not worth that much if you rush to Chet's to trade them in. * A bunch of fixes I couldn't make during development because of load order conflicts, time, etc. E.g.: Automatic Rifle spread re-adjustment, putting the Police Pistol on the Cowboy List, Bozar on Grunt, Junk Rounds are now actual ammo variants you can make, etc. * Some other stuff.

It requires a load order manager (must load after all retail .esms) and every single DLC, including GRA and the pre-order packs.

Note that Josh has done around 20 hours of testing but makes no guarantees:

* I played with this mod for about 20 hours. That's the extent of its testing. Really. BEWARE.

* This is not official and it's not a patch. If it disintegrates your game, do a Kareem and skyhook the .esp into your Recycle Bin.

* I didn't add any huge new things because that wasn't really the point of the mod.

* I avoided anything that involved heavy scripting because I am bad at scripting and didn't want to blow everything up.

Tuesday - November 29, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Post-Mortem, Part 2 @ GameBanshee

You've mentioned Zelazny's Damnation Alley as a source of inspiration for Lonesome Road. That story took place decades after the apocalypse, and indeed Lonesome Road is the most recently apocalyptic area ever seen in a Fallout game. Was this intentional after the post-post-apocalyptic atmosphere of New Vegas? Is this a direction you've been wanting to take for some time?

My only intention was I wanted the player to feel like they were traveling the road to The End. The proper "The End" feel for any Fallout game lies in seeing the wreckage of the world before, all its architecture twisted and cracked and flooded with invisible fires, radiation, and seeing the grave of the world that was. Your road started here, it leads back there, and at the end, you get to see what your journey meant to someone else - and hopefully, decide what it means to you. There are countless ripples that stem from the Divide. Without it, you never would have found the Sierra Madre, encountered Christine, Elijah, and Ulysses, seen Big MT, and more. From one simple act, countless others were born.

Lastly, I wanted to nuke the Fallout world to reset things. NCR's getting a bit big, and it's making things too civilized. Lonesome Road was a way of resetting the culture clock.

Each of the DLCs you've released takes a different approach in both gameplay and setting. What steps did you take to ensure that each one retained a consistent feel with New Vegas, as well as Fallout in general?

We recognized each DLC had to set itself apart, but still fit in the universe. There were a few steps we took, some resource-dependent, others more design-dependent:

- We set up narrative and visual hooks in the Mojave that would tie to the DLCs, whether players recognized them (the Canyon Wreckage was pretty obvious) or only in retrospect (Sierra Madre billboards and posters, Burned Man graffiti and dialogues).

- With respect to the narrative, we made sure we laid the foundation for Ulysses with Nash in Primm to establish the mystery for Lonesome Road, there were plenty of references to the Burned Man in Honest Hearts in the loading screens and in character dialogue that Josh Sawyer (NV Project Director) took care to place in, and I fleshed out the Elijah hooks with Veronica in coordination with Eric Fenstermaker and sat in on Felicia Day's voice recording session for her backstory with Elijah to make sure it connected to Dead Money (although we had to mask the references in the GECK so it didn't spoil what was to come). Eric also helped by setting up evidence of Elijah's path with the bomb collar victims in the Mojave as well.

- Old World Blues was the anomaly, it took everything in the Mojave I thought was odd and tried to give a logical underpinning for it (Cazadores, Nightstalkers), so in essence, Old World Blues was a way of pulling back the curtain and see additional support structure for creatures and events in the Mojave.

- One element of consistency that was resource-dependent was using the existing architecture that had been established both in Fallout 3 and New Vegas, both terrain and actual buildings. We did make an effort to try and use these architectural building blocks in new ways (Lonesome Road being the best example). Seeing consistent architectural styles and props go a long way to making you feel like you're sharing the same space as the Mojave even if other elements of the DLC are new (atmospheric changes such as rain, toxic clouds, dust storms, and so on).

- I do believe because some of us had worked with Fallout for so long, that helped maintain consistency as well. Scotty Everts, who built all the maps for Fallout 1, for example, has been constructing the world of Fallout for a good chunk of his design career, so having his eyes on the New Vegas and DLC terrain was a plus as well.

Thursday - November 17, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Graphic Novel Available for Download

by Dhruin, 09:30

If you didn't grab the Collector's Edition of Fallout: New Vegas when it was released, you can now download the graphic novel All Roads that Chris Avellone penned for that edition:

We’re pleased to announce that “All Roads”, the 48 page graphic novel originally released in the Fallout: New Vegas Collector’s Edition, is now available via Dark Horse Digital. You can download the graphic novel, which tells the story of some of the characters and events that lead up to Fallout: New Vegas, from iTunes as well as the following iOS site: https://digital.darkhorse.com/profile/712.fallout-new-vegas/.

“All Roads” waswritten by Chris Avellone, the game’s creative director, and created in conjunction with Dark Horse Comics. With cover art created by legendary illustrator and comic book artist Geof Darrow with colors by Peter Doherty, the graphic novel also features art by Jean Diaz (Incorruptible) and Wellinton Alves (Marvel’s Shadowland: Blood on the Streets, Nova).

What’s important here isn’t simply the sheer tragedy behind the story, but how well it was told. It wasn’t told through cinematic cutscenes or textual briefings, but rather through the player’s own ability to seek out important environmental details and decode clues from thick blocks of writing. That the story was interactive, engrossing and immersive without becoming preposterously cheesy in the process means that Puce Moose knows what he’s doing. Suffice to say, it wouldn’t have been nearly as stimulating if told through any another less-interactive medium.

Thursday - November 03, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Ultimate Edition Announced

by Dhruin, 21:06

So, the Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate Edition has been announced for next February:

We’re pleased to announce the Fallout: New Vegas® Ultimate Edition will be available in retail stores across North America on February 7th 2012 and throughout Europe on February 10th. The Ultimate Edition comes complete with all of the game add-on content for Fallout: New Vegas - Dead Money, Honest Hearts, Old World Blues, Lonesome Road, Courier’s Stash and Gun Runners’ Arsenal.

For players who are seasoned explorers of New Vegas or just getting into the game for the first time, the Ultimate Edition expands beyond the Wasteland like never before with the Sierra Madre Casino, Zion National Park, Big MT research crater and the treacherous Divide now open for exploring. Along with new areas to explore, each of the four main add-on packs increases the maximum level cap by five levels, ultimately raising the cap to level 50.

Fallout: New Vegas is rated M for Mature by the ESRB. For more information on Fallout: New Vegas please visit http://fallout.bethsoft.com.

Tuesday - November 01, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Lonesome Road Review @ GIN

Whereas Dead Money was all about adding a little bit of a horror aspect to the Fallout World and Honest Hearts was a wilderness adventure, Old World Blues was kind of a humorous take on the wasteland. Lonesome Road is all about story telling. The gameplay itself is more or less traditional. You will be fighting in urban and suburban environments and inside some underground places, even high on a freeway overpass at one point. Your goal is to get from one end of The Divide to the other, and let's hope you have your walking shoes ready, because it's a big place.

Fallout: New Vegas - The Best Mods @ LazyAssGamer

This mods main features are a change to the world to make it seem harsher and, my particular favorite part of this mod, makes the night MUCH darker and almost stops night travel unless you take the correct perks or find some other way to see. I suggest downloading the optional fix for the friend of the night perk included with this mod or the perk will be basically useless, activate it after the main part. If you wish to use the dlc addons activate them after the main part and place them after it in the list. If using this with Nevada Skies activate this after Nevada Skies and place it after NS in the list.

Thursday - September 29, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Lonesome Road Review @ TPCG

Lonesome Road lasted this reviewer about six hours and most of it was a chore to play through. With that being said, it’s not quite worth the $10. But you know what is? The other DLCs. The pervading dullness of Lonesome Road is made only more obvious when compared to the life and energy that is found in Obsidian’s other DLC chapters. However, it’s not all bad. It had some good moments—most of which involved some truly desperate, white-knuckle combat against the high-level Tunnelers and Deathclaws. But for the most part, Lonesome Road’s evident dullness does more to red-flag it as the weakest link in New Vegas’ DLC chain than showcase it as a worthy purchase. One last word of advice: Lonesome Road is intended for players leveled 25 or higher.

Fallout: New Vegas - Lonesome Road Reviews

One of the bigger strides taken by the DLC is in fleshing out your character's past. The courier character has never been a pure 'blank slate' (as he or she clearly has a past and receives hints about it throughout New Vegas), but this is the first time when an event in 'your' life has been revealed in a semi-detailed way. This reveal adds convenient history between yourself and Ulysses and provides some explanation for his actions towards you. As a narrative device it does its job, but it feels a bit jarring to suddenly have an 'off camera' event imposed upon you like that.

Wednesday - September 28, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Courier's Stash and Gun Runners Arsenal Released

Another announcement from Bethsoft with both Courier's Stash and Gun Runners Arsenal DLCs released:

We’re pleased to announce that Courier’s Stash and Gun Runners’ Arsenal is now available for download on Xbox LIVE and will be available later today on PlayStation Network and Steam.

Courier’s Stash (Xbox LIVE for 160 Microsoft points,PlayStation Network and Steam for $1.99) gives players immediate access to four content bundles previously available only through pre-ordering Fallout: New Vegas. The Caravan Pack, Classic Pack, Mercenary Pack and Tribal Pack each offer unique weapons, apparel and aid advantages that will help you throughout your journey.

Gun Runners’ Arsenal (Xbox LIVE for 320 Microsoft points, PlayStation Network and Steam for $3.99) increases the range of unique weapons, weapon mods, ammo types and recipes waiting to be uncovered in the vast Mojave Wasteland.

Two-Step Goodbye - A unique Ballistic Fist for professional wastelanders only. On a particularly devastating kill shot, it plants an explosive charge onto the target. You’ll know what’s coming when you hear the beeping. You’ve got two steps to get away. Use them wisely. Note: we’ve already repaired and re-sold this weapon three times for friends of people who didn’t heed the warning.

Low Yield, Big Kid, and Tiny Tots Mini-Nukes - The Fat Man. You’ve been carrying that huge lump of meta around for how long, and how many times have you fired it? Once? Twice? Seventeen? Whatever the frequency, it’s still not enough. Trust us, we’re the experts. That’s why we’ve brought you three new Mini-Nuke variants. Low Yield is your “everyday” light payload, good for liquidating irritating raiders or the occasional horde of Nightstalkers on the horizon. Traveling through Quarry Junction? Try our Big Kid variant for extra Deathclaw-eradicating power (warning: range is reduced). Last but certainly not least, the Tiny Tots are the answer to a question no one asked, “What if I want to decorate two city blocks with a scattering of miniature mushroom clouds?” N.B.: requires GRA Fat Man or Esther. Specialized Mini-Nukes cannot be fired from a standard Fat Man.

Sunday - September 25, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Gun Runners Arsenal Preview @ Bethblog

Mad Bomber (Perk) - Specialized training is now available for wastelanders with a talent for Repair and a love of Explosives. Learn how to get the most of your Powder Charges, Bottlecap Mines, and Time Bombs! Love Mini-Nukes but hate carrying around a Fat Man? Slap on a Sensor Module and make a Fat Mine! Want to find another use for those heavy Microfusion Cells? With a bit of Scrap Electronics and some know-how, you’ll be hurling MFC Grenades and MFC Clusters in no time! Crafting humble Tin Grenades and even devastating Nuka-Grenades are a snap with this handy perk.

Tin Grenade, Fat Mine - Two ends of the Mad Bomber spectrum, similar purposes: blowing things up. A Tin Grenade is one of the simplest recipes we’ve seen. Take some ordinary Pistol Powder, a Tin Can, and some Duct Tape. Wrap them up (you put the Pistol Powder into the can, we’re told) and you’ve got a cheap, low-power grenade. How does it detonate? Don’t ask us. If you like the explosions generated by Mini-Nukes (who doesn’t? we don’t want to know them) but don’t like carrying around a Fat Man, you can use some Scrap Metal, Scrap Electronics, and Sensor Module to turn that Mini-Nuke into a Fat Mine. Same explosion, different detonation technique. Warning: be careful about planting these on folks — for reasons we hope are obvious.

Thursday - September 22, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Lonesome Road Review @ NMA

by Dhruin, 23:44

Brother None has penned a review of Lonesome Road for NMA. The linear nature and the narrative structure are criticed but the atmosphere is praised. On balance, it gets a modest recommmendation with caveats that not everyone will be satisfied:

The DLC is also very focused. What I mean by that is that it has no side-quests, just its main quests done in a pre-set order. It has no non-hostile NPCs other than ED-E and Ulysses. It doesn't have a lot of explorable optional areas. So it figures this DLC is pretty short compared to the others, I clocked in at about 5 hours, but it is also much denser than the two preceding DLC, you go from fight to fight and dialog to dialog, with no walking back and forth or searching around in between, as opposed to the main game and the preceding two DLCs.

The DLC's strongest point is atmosphere. Unlike the other DLCs, you're given no background through slideshows or expository opening dialogs, you just wander in and have to discover more yourself. The Divide is by far the most thoroughly destroyed area seen in any Fallout. After the post-post-apocalyptic feel of much of New Vegas, it does a great job of giving us a place more freshly off an apocalyptic event, deadly to travel in, wandering through buildings askew (warning: may cause nausea) and crumbling around you. A “Damnation Alley”-esque atmosphere, as creative director Chris Avellone put it, that book's story happening decades after the apocalypse, rather than centuries. There is a constant feeling of danger, and it is underscored very well by having ED-E around responding to imminent threats with whimpering sounds. There's a lot of little moments, such as the first time you meet the tunnelers, you see a deathclaw in the distance attacking one and promptly getting torn to bits. Moments like those really set up the atmosphere.

Wednesday - September 21, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Lonesome Road Review Trio

by Dhruin, 23:45

With Lonesome Road released yesterday, here are the first three reviews we've found. Let's start with the biggest site in this trio, Eurogamer, who score a harsh 5/10:

But it's the big story we're interested in, and it's here that Lonesome Road suffers. Ulysses pops up periodically, speaking via ED-E, and dribbles mouthfuls of mushy exposition into your lap. He talks in the sort of elusive quasi-mythical twaddle that made the later seasons of Lost such a chore to get through, and long before you actually meet him face-to-face, you'll be wondering if all that purple prose is being used to cover up the fact that the story isn't particularly compelling.

Just Push Start is more charitable, calling it "a fitting end" and scoring 3.5/5:

Fallout New Vegas: Lonesome Road is a fitting end for the story of the courier but due to the lack of content/replayability it is a disappointment following the hugely successful Old World Blues. While the story and some of the characters will have you enjoying the experience the rest of the add-on will make that feeling of satisfaction and enjoyment will quickly fade. This is best for those who are heavy duty Fallout fans and those who can look past the problems in the downloadable content.

Once Ulysses has made his intentions clear it’s up to you to find him. Along the way you’ll learn about the past you share and his strange fascination with you. You and him will have an ending to things, a meeting between two Couriers that will be remembered for years to come. Your choices at the end of the road have the chance to affect the Mojave, and thus, the rest of your game. There are numerous choices, and thus several different endings. No matter your decision in the end, feel free to sit back and relax, it’s been a long journey, but it’s finally over. Lonesome Road is by far the best Fallout DLC yet, adding tons of new weapons and gear, new combat scenarios, and a well-written story. The way in which the tale ends makes it feel as though it had always been planned as one of the installments. One possible complaint regarding the add-on is the lack of characters to speak with. Aside from Ulysses and your companion, the only voices you’ll hear are that of pre-recorded Holotapes of the long-dead.

Tuesday - September 20, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Lonesome Road Released

by Dhruin, 23:13

The last story-based DLC for Fallout: New Vegas, Lonesome Road, has been released and is available from Steam and the respective console stores (PS3 is delayed for a few hours) for $9.99 or the equivalent:

In Lonesome Road you are contacted by the original Courier Six, a man by the name of Ulysses who refused to deliver the Platinum Chip at the start of Fallout: New Vegas. Ulysses promises the answer as to why he didn’t take the job,but only if you make one last journey into the hurricane-swept canyons of the Divide, a landscape torn apart by earthquakes and violent storms. It's up to you whether you take the job or not.

The road to the Divide is a long and treacherous one, and of the few to ever walk the road, none have ever returned. Is finding answers to your own past worth the risk? Bring all your gear, all your weapons, but leave your companions behind...this is one road you must walk alone.

Lonesome Road is an artery twisting west out of the Mojave into one of the most dangerous places in the wasteland. The level design complements this - it's like no other road we've constructed for a game before. Bring what weapons you want, what faction allegiances you want, and if the end of the road doesn't beckon you, you can turn away at any time, return to the Mojave... until you're ready to face your past. We're not going to strip your gear or lock you in place. Come and go as you please if history matters to you.

When setting out, the goal was to deliver a Zelazny-style Damnation Alley experience in the Fallout universe (if you haven't read Damnation Alley, I highly recommend it, and recommended the same with our DLC team). Marvel did a more recent take on it with Old Man Logan, and that was a great spin on Damnation Alley as well.

In short, the idea for this last DLC would be the player would be contracted to travel one of the most dangerous roads in the wasteland, the goal a linear one - head for the setting sun, starting at point A, and try to survive to reach point B. In an original draft, we tried to think what payment would work for accepting such a job and what you would carry, when it occurred to us that the player may simply want to satisfy their curiosity about the past and who's been hunting you all this time. So we left it at that.

Monday - September 19, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Lonesome Road Holotape #3

With less than a day until the release of Lonesome Road, we’re sharing one final holotape. After this, you’re on your own to find the rest.

Once more, here’s project director Chris Avellone…

The past can be difficult to escape from. If you’ve played Honest Hearts, not only will you have heard hints of Ulysses’ presence, you will have seen the results of what he’s done in the past that helped shape the White Legs, from their armaments to their rituals. The knowledge your Courier can find in the Divide can help put the tragedies of the past in a larger perspective.

History follows strange roads, and it can follow you no matter how far you walk. This is the third of several holotapes your Courier can discover in Lonesome Road, and helps shed more light on New Canaan, the White Legs, and Graham.

The rest of the holotapes? They are for your Courier to find in the Divide. Perhaps the history within them holds the key to the future.

The first three major Fallout games follow a narrative that is the core of their immersion and satisfaction. This satisfaction transcends the weapons and action, the joys of “Bloody Mess”, the celebrity voices (Wayne freakin’ Newton!), and even the massive and detailed game world: there is an emotional involvement built on the player character’s background and decision making opportunities.

The essential element for this emotional involvement is a player character (PC) that is initially isolated from the wasteland and naive about its nature. The PC starts in a protected community with the support of family and friends, a familiar environment, and plentiful food and water. There may be tension and trials at home, but everyone knows their life is privileged compared to the wasteland outside.

This safe, stable home is then threatened with crisis: a dwindling water supply in Vault 13, a drought in Arroyo, and political instability in Vault 101. At the command of an authority, the PC must then leave this place – leave Eden – to face an unknown world alone with nothing but a small amount of equipment and resources.

Tuesday - September 13, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Lonesome Road Holotape #2

A week from release, Chris Avellone returns to discuss the second holotape you’ll discover in Lonesome Road…

The Fallout New Vegas DLCs have been a unique opportunity to do short stories in the Fallout universe, and a rare opportunity to know, for certain, you’re going to be able to do a series of adventures, with a clear ending. As a narrative designer that allows you to do something rare in the game industry – foreshadowing across multiple titles.

As an experiment, we decided to use this opportunity to tell an overarching story in the Fallout universe, and let the player see firsthand the wreckage left behind in the tracks of two couriers, from your Courier, to Elijah, to Christine, to the Sierra Madre, to Graham and the White Legs, to the Old World madness of the Big Empty… and lastly, the road that leads into the heart of the Divide and the player’s past through Ulysses’ eyes.

This is the second holotape your Courier can discover in Lonesome Road, and helps put Ulysses’ journey to Big MT in Old World Blues in perspective. It was another accident sparked by what happened at the Divide, with far-ranging consequences.

Lonesome Road brings the DLC story arc to a close – events that were first hinted at in New Vegas and Dead Money come to pass, as the last of the DLC cast of characters, Ulysses, reveals himself. For a time, we just introduced him through the perspectives of other characters, a description of another Courier who wore an Old World flag on his back, and in Old World Blues, a mysterious figure who marked his presence through graffiti and holotapes left in the Big Empty.

But those holotapes weren’t the only recordings. Ulysses carried more on his journey back to the Divide, and used them to chronicle his past and yours. As your Courier will discover in Lonesome Road, these recordings of Ulysses are buried in the wreckage and storms of the Divide. As you walk the road, you’ll have a chance to hear the history of the courier who has spent years hunting you down.

This is the first of a series of holotapes your Courier may find in the Divide. While we, as developers only knew a few things for certain about your player character’s history, Ulysses can shed more light on past events – and events to come.

Monday - August 29, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - J.E. Sawyer on the GRA Pack

by Dhruin, 22:59

NMA has collected some comments from J.E. Sawyer answering questions about the F:NV Gun Runners Arsenal item pack DLC. You can read them on his Formspring account or at NMA. Here's the sort of thing you'll find:

I know your not sinking to EA'snickel and diming for clothing and weapon packs that cost a few bucks each but still not a road I want Obsidian to go down. One day just like Mass Efect 2 you'll charge $3 for a few diff clothing options.

I specifically asked to make GRA because I wanted to show players, publishers, and developers that you could make a reasonably-priced weapon pack that added more than two retextures.

Well, that and because I wanted to add some more weapons and ammo types.

In any case, I feel that players will get a very good value for GRA. There's a lot of cool stuff in it.

We’re excited to share that Lonesome Road, the fourth add-on pack for Fallout: New Vegas, will be available for download on Xbox LIVE, PlayStation Network and Steam on September 20th.

In Lonesome Road you are contacted by the original Courier Six, a man by the name of Ulysses who refused to deliver the Platinum Chip at the start of Fallout: New Vegas. Ulysses promises the answer as to why he didn’t take the job, but only if you make one last journey into the hurricane-swept canyons of the Divide, a landscape torn apart by earthquakes and violent storms. It’s up to you whether you take the job or not.

But wait! There’s more!!

Today we’re also announcing two additional DLC packs, Courier’s Stash and Gun Runners’ Arsenal, which will be available for download one week later on September 27th.

Courier’s Stash (Xbox LIVE for 160 Microsoft points,PlayStation Network and Steam for $1.99) gives players immediate access to four content bundles previously available only through pre-ordering Fallout: New Vegas. The Caravan Pack, Classic Pack, Mercenary Pack and Tribal Pack each offer unique weapons, apparel and aid advantages that will help you throughout your journey.

Gun Runners’ Arsenal (Xbox LIVE for 320 Microsoft points, PlayStation Network and Steam for $3.99) increases the range of unique weapons, weapon mods, ammo types and recipes waiting to be uncovered in the vast Mojave Wasteland. Check out a sampling in the screenshots below…

Thursday - August 11, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Old World Blues Review @ Strategy Informer

I wasn’t that impressed by the previous two DLC packs for Fallout: New Vegas. I loved the main game, but both Dead Money and Honest Hearts felt decidedly lacking. Consequently the latest DLC, Old World Blues, had to do a hell of a lot to impress me. The shocking thing is, it has done. Many times over. It’s not only the best Fallout DLC, but one of the best add-ons for any game ever.

Fallout: New Vegas - Lonesome Road Delayed

by Dhruin, 00:36

Senior Producer Jason Bergman has posted on the Bethsoft forums that Lonesome Road has been delayed due to "circumstances beyond our control". He points out it isn't a code problem and, intriguingly, hints at more F:NV news coming soon. Presumably a GotY compilation or similar might be one item but it sounds like their might be more to it:

We just wanted to drop in here and let you know that due to circumstances beyond our control, Lonesome Road won’t be out this month. This isn’t due to any major issue with the code or content, but there are lots of factors involved in releasing these things, and one of those is causing us to slip past our intended release date.

We don’t have an exact date yet, but we’re working to get it out as quickly as possible. We’ll be announcing the final date, along with a couple of other interesting FNV-related items in the near future.

Thursday - August 04, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Old World Blues Review @ NMA

by Dhruin, 23:02

NMA has kicked up a review of Old World Blues, calling it "by far the best Fallout downloadable adventure yet". Here's a snip on exploration:

In terms of gameplay, the add-on is quite obviously tailored for exploration: a central landmark is provided, complete with a base of operations, as a reference point, each of the locations has a strong, unique look and a feature distinguishing it from the landscape and strong incentives are provided as a reward for exploration, be it unique weapons, holotapes that expand home base functionality or, at the very least, background information on the Fallout universe. Despite the obvious tailoring of the Big MT, it's not noticeable during regular gameplay; exploration feels natural and any obstacles on the way, such as forcefields, don't come across as arbitrary piles of rubble preventing the player from progressing, but as just that: obstacles to be overcomed. Hostiles harassing the player during their exploration also don't feel like arbitrary inclusions just for the sake of cool, but are well grounded in the story of the Big Empty and work well in its setting.

Thursday - July 28, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Old World Reviews #4

What would you do if your spine was ripped from your body? What would happen if you had a big gun with a dog's brain? Do light switches get along with each other? These are questions you've likely never thought to ask, yet Fallout: New Vegas - Old World Blues answers them with more humor and irreverence than is contained in the entirety of the last two full Fallout games combined. In this downloadable add-on, you have a conversation with your own body parts and learn the meaning of the word "sonjaculate," perhaps while dressed in an insecure suit of armor that asks, "Do you like me?" Expect to laugh and laugh often, even as you clobber murderous robot scorpions with a sonic weapon that you can program to sound like an opera singer. This kind of wit penetrates every aspect of Old World Blues, which turns ordinary fetch quests into surreal excursions that cleverly hark back to previous threads of dialogue without calling undue attention to the link. And there are so many bizarre touches tucked into the add-on's nooks that you'll want to turn over every stone and open every door, lest a shrewd secret go undiscovered.

Wednesday - July 27, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Old World Blues Reviews #3

If you're looking for smart, funny, exciting new gameplay this summer, you don't have to run down to GameStop to find it. Get on Steam, PSN, or Xbox Live Arcade and pick up the Old World Blues DLC for Obsidian Entertainment's Fallout: New Vegas. Paid DLC gets a bad reputation pretty often, especially from PC gamers, but it's important to point out that if we didn't have it, we wouldn't get wonderful, smart, themed addons like Old World Blues. The price is a rather reasonable ten bucks, and for that you get hours of brilliant writing, off-beat characters, spot-on voice acting, and more RPG choices and action in the style of the already great New Vegas.

My favorite piece of "Fallout 3" DLC was "Point Lookout." The reason it succeeded was because it allowed for large-scale exploration, in contrast to the other, mostly-linear DLC packs. "Old World Blues" is just as exploration heavy. You're given free reign to explore the remains of a massive scientific complex known as Big MT (short for Big Mountain). There are a few dozen locations to stumble upon and many of them are completely off the main quest path. If you're the sort that just likes to wander around and stumble into trouble, "Old World Blues" is the DLC for you.

Beyond the humor, Old World Blues delivers a welcome challenge steeped in 1950s pulp sci-fi. Step outside of the cozy confines of the Think Tank for the first time, and you quickly discover why Obsidian cautions that Big Mountain is meant for players level 15 or above. Even with my hardened level 40 Wasteland badass, I quickly found myself under fire by .357 magnum-packing Lobotomites while Cyberdogs, Nightstalkers, and Roboscorpions swarmed.

Old World Blues may be the third piece of downloadable content for Fallout: New Vegas but it is by far the strongest of the bunch. There isn’t a whole lot changed from your standard gameplay formula but the amount of content added is certainly worth the price of admission. Simply running through the story alone will take the average player around six hours, but with many areas to explore it would be a waste to simply blow through the quirky and enjoyable world that has been hidden away in Big MT.

Monday - July 25, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Old World Blues Reviews # 2

The DLC is reasonably long, clocking 12 hours my first playthrough to discover everything, and about 3-6 subsequent playthroughs (summer break, bored out of my head)The new weapons give us new unarmed, melee, energy and traditional weapons. There is a truly outstanding new armor option for stealth players, and various scrubs if you have a doctor fetish. Most of the weapons will feel underpowered, but that's more because of the fact that everything at Big Moutain has either heavy armor or alot of health, take them back to the mojave to REALLY get your kicks.

The gameplay is typical Fallout and Old World Blues increases the level cap by five yet again. You'll be given lots of fetch quests to pursue unless you'd rather wander around exploring or murdering things. If all of this doesn't sound appealing to you, then I'm not sure why you still own the game. Similar to past downloadable contents for New Vegas, it ends with various cut-scenes detailing how the decisions you made along the way affected the whereabouts and fates of the characters you've interacted with.

Fallout: New Vegas - Old World Blues Review @ GameBanshee

Why do I bring this up? Well, one of New Vegas' most-praised points by the original fanbase was the return to the franchise's roots, casting off much of the absurdity that crept into Fallout 2 and more so into Fallout 3. With that in mind, it's worth saying it straight out: Old World Blues is just plain ridiculous. It's silly, it's hilarious, and often winks at the fourth wall. It grabs hold of those 1950s underpinnings the original series had, and inflates them to the point where Old World Blues feels about as tongue-in-cheek as a game can be. And this, really, is the deciding point on whether you should pick up Old World Blues, because right from the moment you start it, it doesn't let up. As good as it is, I have no problem telling some players that they simply might not like it, because of how close to heart they hold Fallout and how strongly-conceived a vision they may have of it.

At the same time, all the absurdity is handled with a certain amount of class, a degree of intelligence - for every unexpected joke about "hand penises", there's another five or ten obscure references, innuendos, wordplays, etc., and it's all brilliantly well-implemented, tying in with the main characters in a way which brings them well beyond mere comic relief. Upon first visiting the Big Empty, I was a little bewildered at just how off-kilter it all was... but after spending a little longer, I began to realise what a finely-crafted world it really was, the underlying logic behind all the absurdity. By the end, the silliness gave way to a degree of poignancy and reflection, just tragic enough, and it made me appreciate the characters on a level above what I initially took them for. Funny though it may be, Old World Blues' biggest success isn't that it got me to laugh more than any other game in a long time, but that it did so without undermining its own integrity, and did so in a way that was respectful both to me, as a player, and to itself.

Thursday - July 21, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Old World Blues Reviews

This is the funniest Fallout DLC I have ever played. There’s humor coming from all angles: with robots that think you have penises for fingers and toes, a mad drug addicted robot and the egomaniac toaster. Old World Blues is definitely the most fun and entertaining add-on to any of the Fallout series. There are hours of gameplay in this DLC: Bethesda has added 5 more levels to your level cap making it 40, 5 new perks, an extra 4 unlock-able perks and 5 new achievements/trophies. The only bad point I can think of with this DLC is that some of the side quests are rather tedious. At certain points they have you going to four certain destinations then to four more, then to the same four you previously went to, and so on. There is also a tad too much dialogue at the beginning of the game when you meet Dr. Klein, but apart from that it is totally worth purchasing!

And so, you can imagine how excited we were when we realized that Old World Blues was both A) very, very funny and B) absolutely worth the price of admission. There are a number of new weapons on-hand (the new gun that's basically a gatling gun with a dog's brain strapped onto the side of it is great fun to shoot), new enemies to slaughter (the mechanized Radscorpions look like Iron Man crossed with, uh, Radscorpions), a ton of locations (35 in all), a great story (we'll get to that in the next paragraph), and the scenery's 300 times more interesting than anything we saw in Honest Hearts. This is-- simply put-- the best Fallout DLC since Point Lookout. Yeah, I said it.

Welcome to Big Mountain where Science is a noun. The third Fallout New Vegas DLC installment, Old World Blues, is upon us. Dead Money was great and Honest Hearts was not, so how does this add-on fare? With an interesting new setting, cool new weapons and perks and a completely different tone, it is a great addition to the Fallout New Vegas family. At times un-nerving and always humorous, Old World Blues is a must have for Fallout fans.

Wednesday - July 20, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Old World Blues Reviews @ Eurogamer, RPS

by Dhruin, 22:17

After modest review scores for the first two Fallout: New Vegas DLCs, it looks like Obsidian might have found a winner with Old World Blues - at least judging from these two early reviews at Eurogamer and RPS.

That blast of entertaining exposition out of the way, you're free to explore the ruined crater in which the facility sits. The plot is minimal at first, unfolding naturally as you poke around and fetch bits and pieces for Klein. Basically, one of the science brains - inevitably named Dr Mobius - has gone rogue and now fills the area with robot scorpions and beams, rambling threats at the rest of his former team. Mobius has also stolen your brain, and the radar fence surrounding the crater will kill you if you attempt to leave without retrieving it.

From there, it becomes the most open DLC yet for New Vegas. The game doesn't nudge you towards attempting the quests in any particular order, and the Big Empty crater is anything but. It's small in terms of square footage but dense in features, with 35 specific locations sprinkled across (and below) its surface. So if you'd rather poke around, discover the enticingly titled Mysterious Cave and tackle the monstrous Legendary Bloatfly, that's entirely up to you. In any other game, this would be a story-punctuating boss battle. Here it's just one of several surprises tempting you off the beaten track.

The laissez-faire approach pays dividends as the story unfolds at its own pace, filling in not only the backstory of the warring science-brains and their mountain retreat, but also other elements of the wider Mojave wasteland. There's a lot of information on Elijah, antagonist of Dead Money, and even explanations for some of the unique flora and fauna of New Vegas. If you want to know who to blame for f***ing Cazadores, this is the download for you.

What really makes Old World Blues a joy though is its sense of humour. It knows how silly it is, and it utterly embraces it. Obsidian’s obviously been playing a lot of Portal recently, but it comes through in all the right ways – the crazy characters, the hilarious back-and-forths between the squabbling scientists, the snide messages on terminals, and even a few bits where you outright enter test chambers to solve problems and retrieve fancy guns. Unlike Portal though, you get full RPG interaction with everyone and everything, letting you fire a few shots back at the arrogant machines – literally or figuratively – and twist them around your little finger – figuratively. Hell, at one point, as long as you’re packing the right Traits, you can seduce a lightswitch.

Fallout: New Vegas - Old World Blues Released, Blog Post

Old World Blues is built around the history of Fallout games we’ve worked on. It’s history-that’s-created-history, with a dash of what might have been from past games, media, and design documents from Fallout 1, 2, and past Fallout projects given new life. From Lobotomites, DNA splicing, Cazadores, Night Stalkers, where-the-hell-did-those-plants-in-the-Mojave-come-from, the scientific enclave of Big MT itself, Proton weapons, and giant robotic scorpions, all of these things formed the nucleus of taking a trip into the past-is-present Fallout universe to see a slice of the Old World that’s been fenced in and feeding on itself for far too long. We wanted you to see the context and homages to the Fallout universe in a scientific preserve, both from the distant Fallout past to more recent adventures in New Vegas and the DLCs. As you’ll discover, Big MT (or the Big “Empty”) is filled with what-might-have-been… and all that was lost that potentially could have made a better world for all. There’s an undercurrent of the blues all around Big MT… but if you’re strong enough, you can change it, and the whole meaning of Old World Blues forever.

Designing Old World Blues was an adventure in itself. It involved taking a trip down memory lane, both in terms of past games and also in terms of 1950s sci-fi cinema to get the exaggerated “Science!” feel, where a great many inventions were atomic and anything nuclear promised amazing things for the future. Usually with an exclamation mark. Over the course of Old World Blues, we watched and paid respect to some of the 50s science fiction films from Brain from the Planet Arous, Things to Come!, Forbidden Planet, When Worlds Collide, the Deadly Mantis, Tarantula, the Mole People (although we pushed some of that out for the next DLC), the Monolith Monsters, and more. There’s also a little Wizard of Oz thrown in for good measure… although it’s in the Fallout context.

In the post-apocalyptic world of Fallout 3, sex is serious business – so serious, in fact, that it’s generally mentioned in the most euphemistic fashion possible, and you could get burned.

(I may be unreasonably bitter on that one. How was I to know that when I “rented a room” I would lie on a bed with a waitress and then get up again?) Unlike the first two entries in the Fallout series, in which a PC could flirt with and marry same-sex partners, it’s mostly straight as an arrow. Play a female character and you can have the “room rental” scene with the waitress, but there is no opportunity to flirt with the women of the wasteland. A perk gives access to damage bonuses against and special conversation options with the opposite sex, but there is no same-sex equivalent. So you may imagine my delight when, trundling around the wasteland of New Vegas killing wolves and stealing beer bottles, I discovered a new perk: “Confirmed Bachelor”.

Cue much speculation from my partner and me. Did that mean…? Well, the picture DID have a man looking deviously at another man in bed… But maybe the game makers just meant the damage bonus thing… Wait! There were gay conversation options! There were female gay conversation options! You could have gay AND straight conversation options! That’s right: in New Vegas you can choose to be gay or bisexual. And you get combat bonuses for doing so.

Fallout: New Vegas - Dead Money Review @ CPUGamer

Dead Money is interesting in that it truly changes things up for the formerly over-confident gamer. By the time I played this content, I was already level 30 and had a deadly arsenal and high stats and skills in most categories. What I found was that excelling in Dead Money required me to develop different skills. I found the need for a higher medicine rating and cannot understate how helpful melee combat skills were. The weapons were few and far between, and the ammunition was also hard to come across. Those who embraced making ammunition and equipment likely had a far easier time that I did at the beginning of this episode.

Fallout: New Vegas - Reviews for DLC Honest Hearts

Like the first chunk of FNV DLC, Dead Money, the plot and dialog of Honest Hearts are its strongest features. The two central characters encountered in this open-world tract of Utah desert, Daniel and Joshua, are both post-nuclear Mormons working to save a peace-loving tribe from hostiles, and their passionately argued disagreement as to how to approach the problem creates a real ethical dilemma as you pick a side. Joshua’s history—and his link to the events in the Mojave—is great to read into as well.

There are around thirty new locations to be discovered but many of them are simply caravan sites or small piers, which are relevant given the setting, but are far from satisfying to an excitement-seeking adventurer. Upon exploring the map’s cave system, you may uncover the most compelling aspect of the DLC: the uncovering of a segmented sub-plot where you learn about a survivor of the war on the verge of suicide, who settled in the area whilst assisting the locals without them knowing.

Fallout: New Vegas - Old World Blues Release Date and 3 Screenshots

We’ve received plenty of inquiries asking when we’ll be releasing Fallout: New Vegas’s third DLC, Old World Blues. Today I can confirm the content will release on PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 on Tuesday, July 19th.

Prior to release, we will release a new title update for New Vegas. Along with adding support for Old World Blues, the update will bring improvements to performance and stability in major areas.

Saturday - May 28, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Honest Hearts Review @ GameSpot

In the Fallout universe, nuclear war has ravaged the country, but religious faith abides. In Fallout: New Vegas - Honest Hearts, men of God struggle to find peace in a land where strife is inescapable--a powerful theme for a downloadable add-on. The story in Honest Hearts doesn't take advantage of this fertile premise, but that premise still enriches this formulaic yet enjoyable adventure into Utah's Zion National Park. As its name would suggest, some see this region as a promised land, and it's here that two religious leaders struggle to maintain control in the face of a warring tribe that would drive them out. Zion is a big and atmospheric setting for a new adventure, and there's enough new content here to keep you busy for four or five hours as you shoot up charging geckos and get to know the local tribes. That said, Honest Hearts doesn't make a lasting impression; none of its characters, places, or events stand up to those of the main game or even those of Fallout 3's better content packs. Yet, this enjoyable excursion gives you several welcome chances to exercise the power of choice, and it rewards you with new perks, new weapons, and an increased level cap.

Fallout: New Vegas - Review @ GameBanshee

Honest Hearts, the second downloadable add-on for Fallout: New Vegas, is a title I’m still having a little trouble fully making my mind up about, as it finds itself disappointing in some respects but excelling in others. On the one hand, it offers up a sizeable new area to explore with dozens of locations, a totally unique aesthetic style, some surprisingly fleshed-out lore, and characters that are both interesting in terms of backstory and gripping as far as their personalities go, but on the other, the overall structure and storyline are lacking much of the drama, intensity and focus that it hints so promisingly at early on.

Wednesday - May 25, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Review @ NMA

Much like Dead Money, Honest Hearts is primarily story and character driven. The main plot focuses on the conflict between the savage White Legs and the indigenous tribals of Zion: the Dead Horses and the Sorrows. Its enjoyable - but linear - quests have to be completed in a predetermined order and it is not until the end that the player can make some real decisions. However, the amount of subplots and background information included in Honest Hearts more than makes up for the simplicity of the main plot.

Fallout: New Vegas - Honest Hearts Review Roundup @ NMA

It's a storyline with promise, but various issues prevent the this expansion from fulfilling its potential. In particular, the bugs of New Vegas are still present, only when you consider the core game was released nearly eight months ago, they're unforgivable. You mean to tell me if I completed the "ED-E, My Love" side quest in the core game, I can't play Honest Hearts? Yes, this bug actually exists (at least, in the PC version). WTF, Bethesda and Obsidian? And various new bugs have chewed their way into the game's code and laid plenty of eggs, resulting in a frustrating, glitchy experience.

Compared to Dead Money I found this DLC infinitely more fun and much more on par with some of the previous Fallout 3 DLC. Whilst lacking in depth and difficulty, you can't ignore that it has brought back one of the main elements to a Fallout game: exploration. 800 Microsoft points seems a worthy trade for an average playtime of five hours and although, other than the background environment, there isn't anything new on offer in terms of gameplay, the extra perks, new weapons and additional story relating to the Burned Man are not to be sniffed at - especially for a second playthrough or someone still mid-adventure in the Mojave. I found my playthrough a leisurely one; almost a break from the punishing Mojave environment, but more importantly an enjoyable one. A definite step in the right direction and hope has been restored for the two already announced future DLC content packs.

Friday - May 20, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Honest Hearts Review @ IGN

When considering the $10 or 800 Microsoft point purchase, ask yourself these questions: Do I like Fallout, but need a new place to explore? Do I want a higher level cap? Do I want to know more about the Burned Man? If the answer to any of these is “yes”, then do yourself a favor and download Honest Hearts. It doesn’t change much of the Fallout formula, which is a good thing. The narrative could be stronger and there’s a lack of variety in terms of creatures occupying the park, but these are minor complaints about an otherwise enjoyable time.

Wednesday - May 18, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Honest Hearts Released on Steam, First Reviews

by Dhruin, 23:27

A few readers wrote in to say Honest Hearts was released not long after I posted about it yesterday, so head to Steam if you are interested. A bit from the blurb about the game:

An expedition into the unspoiled wilderness of Utah's Zion National Park goes horribly wrong when your caravan is ambushed by a tribal raiding band. As you try to find a way back to the Mojave you become embroiled in a war between tribes and a conflict between a New Canaanite missionary and the mysterious Burned Man. The decisions you make will determine the fate of Zion.

As a side story to the main event, Honest Hearts is forgettable and predictable. Where it justifies its asking price is in the takeaway benefits it supplies to the long-term wasteland wanderer. More levels, more perks, new weapons and new enemies - this is what really benefits the game, and Honest Hearts delivers more than enough to make it a worthwhile diversion for players of all levels. It would just be easier to recommend if the story wrapped around the gameplay additions was more compelling.

Tuesday - May 17, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Honest Hearts Released on X360

by Dhruin, 22:15

Honest Hearts is due for release today and looking around, it seems the X360 version is live but we're still waiting on the PC release through Steam (in fact, I can't see a mention of it on Steam at the moment). Here's a tweet from Bethsoft's Jason Bergman:

Honest Hearts for 360 is out! Go download it! PC should be up shortly. Marketplace link for 360: http://bit.ly/iMSoJy

May 3, 2011 (Rockville, MD) – Bethesda Softworks®, a ZeniMax® Media company, today announced three downloadable content packs will be released in the coming months for Fallout®: New Vegas™. The three packs will be released simultaneously for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system, and Windows-based PCs.

Honest Hearts™, Old World Blues™ and Lonesome Road™ will further expand upon Fallout: New Vegas. Fallout: New Vegas takes all the action, humor and post-apocalyptic grime and grit of this legendary series, and raises the stakes.

Available on May 17, Honest Hearts takes you on an expedition to the unspoiled wilderness of Utah’s Zion National Park. Things go horribly wrong when your caravan is ambushed by a tribal raiding band. As you try to find a way back to the Mojave, you become embroiled in a war between tribes and a conflict between a New Canaanite missionary and the mysterious Burned Man. The decisions you make will determine the fate of Zion.

In Old World Blues, releasing in June,you will discover how some of the Mojave’s mutated monsters came to be when you unwittingly become a lab rat in a science experiment gone awry. You’ll need to scour the Pre-War research centers of the Big Empty in search of technology to turn the tables on your kidnappers or join forces with them against an even greater threat.

Lonesome Road, available in July, brings the courier’s story full circle when you are contacted by the original Courier Six, a man by the name of Ulysses who refused to deliver the Platinum Chip at the start of New Vegas. In his transmission, Ulysses promises the answer as to why, but only if you take one last job –a job that leads you into the depths of the hurricane-swept canyons of the Divide, a landscape torn apart by earthquakes and violent storms. The road to the Divide is a long and treacherous one, and of the few to ever walk the road, none have ever returned.

Reviews of Fallout: New Vegas have called the game as “an utterly essential purchase” (MSN UK) and as “addictively, rambunctiously fun” (Entertainment Weekly). The Associated Press awarded it a 4 out of 4 stars and said “Bottom Line: It’s a Blast”, while GameSpy gave it 4.5 out of 5 stars and called Fallout: New Vegas “one of the best games of the year.”

All downloadable content for Fallout: New Vegas will be available for download on Xbox LIVE® for 800 Microsoft Points, the PlayStation®Network for $9.99, and both Steam and Direct2Drive for $9.99.

Published by Bethesda Softworks and developed at Obsidian Entertainment, Dead Money, Honest Hearts, Old World Blues, Lonesome Road, andFallout: New Vegas have been rated M for Mature by the ESRB. For more information on Fallout: New Vegas, including the game’s downloadable content, please visit http://fallout.bethsoft.com.

Friday - April 29, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - X360 Patch Issues

Update (4/29): The update should be available worldwide on PS3, Xbox 360, and PC.

Regarding the Xbox 360 update, we’ve discovered a solution to the issue that’s causing problems with game saves. Updated news on the Xbox 360 update for New Vegas. The update for English versions of the game should be going live later tonight. Exact time is TBA, but it’ll probably be later in the night. For folks playing the game in other languages, the wait is going to be a little longer. When we have a better estimate of what that will be, we’ll let you know.

Automatic Guns - SMGs, the Assault Carbine, and the LMG are more accurate across the board. They're also more durable. 12.7mm SMG mag capacity increased to 21.

Shotguns - Buckshot has received a x1.2 inherent DAM mod. This slightly incentivizes using buckshot over slugs when enemy armor is not an issue. Magnum buckshot has a x1.3 DAM mod and a small amount of DT bypass. Spread for many shotguns has been lowered.

Hunting Rifle, Anti-Materiel Rifle - Hunting Rifle and AMR now have the lowest spread of all rifles. Hunting Rifle RoF increased, Crit Chance set to x2. Anti-Materiel Rifle's Crit DAM has been raised from 80 to 110 to make it more viable when compared to the Gobi.

Sniper Rifle, Gobi Campaign Scout Rifle - Sniper Rifle and Gobi now have a higher RoF and lower AP cost. Both have x2 Crit Chance. Gobi has increased DAM and much higher Crit DAM over the Sniper Rifle.

That Gun - That Gun is now a slow-firing hand cannon that does huge DAM firing 5.56mm out of a short barrel.

Fallout: New Vegas - Dead Money Review @ NMA

While Dead Money in general plays the same as the main Fallout New Vegas game the focus on the player skills are somewhat different than the main game. Dead Money is still an action role playing game, but an important aspect of the game is survival which is implemented in the game through the various hazards and the strong enemies as well as the severe lack of resources such as stimpaks, weapons, and ammunition the player could take for granted in New Vegas. These are very rare and precious now and sometimes it is better to avoid a conflict or try to use a trap against an enemy rather than trying to approach the situation Action Boy style.

Wednesday - April 13, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - New Patch Coming

On behalf of all of the hard-working teams at Bethesda and Obsidian, I’d like to give you an update what we’ve been working on these past few months.

Well, here’s what happened: our next DLC release (announcement coming very soon, we promise) has been complete while we worked on getting a patch ready for you all. We didn’t want to just release more DLC before we had a patch that would improve the overall New Vegas experience.

The good news is that we do have such a patch and it’s been handed off to the necessary platform owners. It should be released in the next couple of weeks on 360, PS3 and PC (can’t be more specific than that, I’m afraid, although PC will almost certainly get it first).

So what’s in that patch? First and foremost, optimizations and stability improvements. While there are bug fixes, our core focus was on improving stability and performance. We worked directly with first party platform owners to identify issues, and we have fixed a great deal of the crashes and lockups that people were experiencing. In addition, we scoured the forums and this patch includes weapon balance tweaks and other requested fixes.

We know we’re not done yet. There’s still more work to do, and we’ll be monitoring the forums very carefully following the release of this patch, looking for more issues. We do have another update planned further down the line.

So I’d like to apologize for the radio silence. Hopefully you’ll be pleased with the enormous amount of work we’ve put into this update over the last few months, and will enjoy the rest of our DLC releases. We have some pretty cool stuff coming soon. Stay tuned!

Friday - March 18, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Dead Money Review @ GameBanshee

Nicely, Dead Money has a lot of things going for it. Most importantly, at least for me, is that it doesn't play anything like New Vegas or Fallout 3. The action takes place at the Sierra Madre Casino and the villa surrounding it, which has a unique appearance (and possibly even answers the question of what Fallout: Spain might look like), and you have to do odd things like dodge radios and speakers, run through poisonous gas, and defeat enemies by dismembering them or decapitating them (if you don't then they just get right back up and attack you again). Plus, because you lose your equipment, you have to scrounge around for supplies (which are seriously limited, at least for a while), and you have to use items that you're not accustomed to. I bet I ate more pre-war junk food in the DLC than I had with all of my New Vegas and Fallout 3 characters combined.

Tuesday - March 08, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Dead Money Review @ GameOver

I’m really conflicted about the first DLC for Fallout New Vegas – Dead Money. On the one hand there is the ancient and honorable custom known as milking it. The same thing that gave us seven Police Academy sequels and the however many books were written in the Dune series after Frank Herbert’s death has apparently resulted in not only four DLC packs for Fallout 3, but Fallout New Vegas (which isn’t all that different from Fallout 3). And now (Wikipedia informs me) there are to be eight, count ‘em, eight DLC packs for New Vegas. Oy. Seriously? On the other hand, given the somewhat limited possibilities of the Fallout gameplay engine as a whole, Dead Money, while not actually breaking out of that mold, manages to bring some fresh tension. It forced me out of the comfortable pattern – meet a creature, activate the VATS, blow its head off, wash, rinse, repeat – that served me pretty well up until now. Then it takes that innovative gameplay mix and smashes it flat with an enormous repetitive sledgehammer.

Friday - March 04, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Dead Money Review @ Big Download

At the same time, the Sierra Madre villas make it a fresh place that's unlike anywhere else found in New Vegas, apart from everything being trashed and looted. Dead Money's greatest strength is in its story and characters, which might be especially appealing to players that want further closure on the Helios One and Veronica storylines. We loved the idea of holograms wandering around on infinite loop in an abandoned city like ghosts. There are also a handful of clues scattered around indicating what the next DLC expansion will include. Howver, we wish some of the heist elements were a little more involved. For example, one guy's role is to hold two wires together once you trigger the signal. On the other hand, we enjoyed seeing things play out as the crew inevitably turns against you, and all you have to do is set things up so that the Ghost People won't rush him immediately after the task. Furthermore, the rewards of playing through Dead Money are somewhat limited.

Thursday - February 24, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Dead Money Review @ GameSpot

If you were to list your favorite aspects of Fallout: New Vegas, "trap avoidance" would not likely be a top entry. Nevertheless, New Vegas' first downloadable add-on, Dead Money, requires you to make your way through trap-infested streets and corridors, where you must keep your eyes peeled and your ears keen, lest you miss the signs of the game's deadly hazards. The focus on careful exploration sometimes acts as a strength; at other times, a weakness. Escaping a mine-infested street can make for tense progress, which in turn leads to a pleasant feeling of relief should you make it through unharmed. On the other hand, these constant dangers eventually lead to frustration because the labyrinthine and monotonous levels suck the joy out of exploration. Fallout: New Vegas - Dead Money too often stresses the main game's worst qualities. For example, it's incredible that developer Obsidian Entertainment thought to include several jumping bits, considering the game engine's terrible, unresponsive jumping mechanics. Fortunately, great voice acting and intriguing new characters provide a counterpoint to the flaws and inspire you to push ahead regardless of the frustrations.

Fallout: New Vegas - Dead Money Released for PC

Monday - February 14, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Review @ Second Letter Gaming

by Dhruin, 21:17

Second Letter Media sent in their review of Fallout: New Vegas. There's no score but the article subtitle of "the neverending fetch quest" sets the tone, although I found the short piece left far too much unexplained. Here's the summary:

I guess I can stop hating long enough to be objective and say that Fallout New Vegas is a good game. There were several concepts introduced that would have been outstanding had they been fleshed out a bit better. The concept of Caesar's Legion, I thought, was particularly awesome. That was easily the best storyline to me. I could never give a fetch-quest marathon like this "RPGOTY" honors (*looks at Risen review and tries to avoid calling self a hypocrite*), but it can be a very enjoyable experience for folks that like the "choose your own adventure" style of the Fallout series. If you loved FO3, go for it. You'll probably feel, as I did, that it's not quite as good as its predecessor. However, if you couldn't get enough FO3, this is more than capable of scratching your itch until a proper sequel is made.

Friday - February 04, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Dead Money, Three More DLCs Coming to PC

by Dhruin, 22:56

Bethsoft sent us news that Dead Money for Fallout: New Vegas will go multi-platform on February 22nd, with three more simultaneous-release DLCs planned for down the track:

We have a couple Fallout: New Vegas-related news items that we’re excited to share with you. On Tuesday, February 22nd, we’ll be releasing Dead Money for PlayStation 3 via PSN and PC via Steam and Direct 2 Drive. In addition to Dead Money, we will be releasing three additional add-on packs in the coming months. These packs will launch simultaneously on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC.

Ignoring these nagging concerns to my sanity, I tossed together a new character, named him, selected a properly grizzled beard, and then sent him off to the most remote corner of the game, at the scenic Mojave Outpost. I dropped all my equipment save for a vault jumpsuit, a simple pistol with a single clip, and one bottle of clean drinking water. Then, finally, I set myself up with the following insane list of “hardcore” changes:

If anyone ever doubted the quantity of my nerd cred, I would tell them about the ridiculous charts I made for myself which, along with a little stopwatch, kept me on a regular schedule of food and water consumption. I won’t bore you with the details, suffice to say it made me use up a much more realistic amount of supplies for the energy I was expending trudging through a terrible wasteland.

The Obsidian RPG has only been bolstered with one pack so far – Dead Money – but Hines confirmed the common assumption that more content is on the way.

“Oh absolutely,” said the company’s VP of PR and marketing when asked if we could expect more packs in 2011.

“I don’t think we’ve ever had a product where we said, ‘Yeah, we’re just gonna do one DLC pack and that’s all she wrote.’ We like to support our products. We like to do a good job of that, and I don’t think putting out one DLC pack would reach that.

“I would say you can probably look for other stuff from us down the road.”

Thursday - January 20, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Hi-Res Mod

by Dhruin, 21:14

Omega points out a Fallout: New Vegas Hi-Res mod from 4Aces that increases the major textures in the game by 400%. I'm not sure it actually looks better but some of you will be far more informed on graphics than I am.

Tuesday - January 18, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Project Nevada Trailer

The video above is for Project Nevada, a work-in-progress New Vegas mod that includes plenty of nice features — including unique HUD visors, enhanced vision modes, new scopes, dynamic crosshairs, and even the ability to sprint and tackle (don’t miss the hilarious tackle at the 3:25 mark of the video).

Monday - January 17, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Dead Money Review @ Pop Matters

One of those tired old gaming canards that I usually abhor is the sudden and unstoppable stripping away of all of the player’s gear. Usually this feels lazy to me, but often it’s the only way that the designers can think of to set the stage for the right kind of drama. It happens here too, but I think that the results are worth the credulity straining event. I came into the DLC at Level 26 (this expansion raises the level cap by five) with a ton of great weapons and drugs. It had been a long time since my character had been desperate for ammo and stim packs, so it was fun to be put back into the scrounging mentality that Fallout places the player in so very well. Stuck in a mysterious new environment with a variety of new dangers—poison gas, radio signals that can kill you, and creepy new enemy types—all conspired to create a terrific sense of dread and desperation. While there’s a kind of limited set of new geometry and textures that gets a little repetitive, the Sierra Madre and its environs aren’t quite like anything we’ve seen in Fallout before, which makes for good DLC.

Thursday - January 13, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Dead Money Review @ Ausgamers

Immediately Dead Money feels completely different and separate from the rest of New Vegas. You’re companionless, weaponless, cut off from the rest of the world by a purple toxic cloud and no fast travel, and held at bay by an explosive charge embedded in the collar on your neck. You’re at Father Elijah’s beck and call, and he’s gonna make you work for your freedom.

You’re tasked with working through the labyrinth-like Villa on the Casino’s outskirts to recruit three eclectic companions (a ghoulish entertainer, a mutilated mute tech-whiz and a bi-polar super mutant) to help you break into the vault, each with their own motivations, quirks and explosive ring around the collar. The twist is that all of your collars are linked, so if one dies, you all die. That’s one way to build teamwork now, innit? Not only do you have to keep your offsiders onside to stop your head going boom, but outside factors also come into play.

Wednesday - January 12, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Reviews @ GoozerNation, Graduate Times

by Dhruin, 22:39

Omega sends in a couple of late reviews for Fallout: New Vegas, one quite positive and the other less so because of bugs. From GoozerNation:

I find myself using Fallout Wiki a lot. Anytime I start a new quest, that website is my first destination. It’s not to figure out how to do the quest however, it’s to see what kind of bugs I should expect to deal with in the upcoming area or quest. I have avoided entire quests based on either wanting to avoid bugs, or decided my blood pressure was more valuable then attempting the quest for the 14th time. I should have read these ahead of time, before I realized you can’t modify unique weapons, despite the fact that the game still gives you the option to do so. The end result is a lovely distorted screen that requires you to sell your awesome weapon in order to remove.

These glitches have also forced me to invent new ways to achieve my missions or goals. While amusing at first, repeatedly not being able to do things the “correct” way over and over gets old. Imagine if you were given a Monopoly board, with half the board missing and someone said “Now figure out how to play.” I found myself having to steal plenty of goods from Mick & Ralph’s in Freeside in order to get stuff I want/need.

New Vegas differs from Fallout 3 in the increased importance of balancing reputation with the various factions. New Vegas, like Fallout 2, is a world where humanity is no longer just recovering from an Apocalypse. Settlements have grown, powerful weapons and technology have been recovered and now there are large organised groups fighting for dominance of the Strip, all insistent on waging war, gaining control at all costs and generally not learning from the mistakes of the past. They are often too big to just walk in through their front gates and wipe them out on your own (at least until you reach level 30) and besides, you would never be able to carry all of that loot, so you might need the help of their rivals. Scheming and plotting, setting one side against the other, taking down a faction from within after building enough reputation with them that they practically worship you – New Vegas is a fun game if you have a high Charisma and high speech, ‘Confirmed Bachelor’ and ‘Lady Killer’.

One of the characters you meet in the Sierra Madre is Christine. She starts off as a mute, but eventually you discover that she's actually a member of the Brotherhood of Steel. Her mission was to track down Father Elijah, the main antagonist of "Dead Money," and bring him to justice. Unfortunately, in tracking him down, she was captured and held in something she calls The Big Empty. It's here that she was experimented on, as evidenced her numerous scars.

They go on to explain The Big Empty originated with Van Buren - a snip from an old Chris Avellone interview at NMA:

"...my favorite was the Big Empty (the Big Mt. Training facility run by Mr. Handys). There was lots of military-inspired goodness, plus an obstacle course we planned for a player to be able to run, using their different skillsets to outwit the mechanical judges and training officers."

Monday - January 10, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Dead Money Reviews @ AVault, The Escapist

Good length and getting value for your money only constitute a solid deal if the game is actually fun to play. So while it’s great that Dead Money is nice and long, it’s just so darn hard and repetitive, that it’s tough to get any real enjoyment out of it. I finished the entire quest and was more happy that it was over than feeling any sense of accomplishment. The game gives you a warning not to even try undertaking it unless you have an experience level of 20 or higher, and they sure do mean it. Also, Dead Money assumes that your character is proficient in skills other than weaponry (i.e. Science, Lock picking, etc.), which isn’t always the case for many players.

That's where the knocks on Dead Money end though, because it brings a great deal to the table that is both much-appreciated and sorely absent from previous Fallout titles. Namely: tension. The new enemies, the mysterious "Ghost People," feel somehow more sinister than anything yet devised for a Fallout game, and in any event are surprisingly difficult to kill. This, combined with the first ever genuine shortage of weapons and ammunition in a Fallout game (odd, considering these are "post apocalypse" games), and the introduction of "the Cloud" a toxic gas slowly consuming the Sierra Madre, serve to introduce an element of dread, making Dead Money worth playing for the adrenaline alone.

Friday - January 07, 2011

Fallout: New Vegas - Direct2Drive Sale

by Dhruin, 23:39

Omega points out Direct2Drive has a sale with $20 off Fallout: New Vegas (as well as 20% off MMOs). I'm guessing that makes the price $29.95 for North America but D2D never likes my region, so it shows $54.95 for me. The details via Joystiq.

Fallout: New Vegas - Dead Money Review @ GameSpot

If you were to list your favorite aspects of Fallout: New Vegas, "trap avoidance" would not likely be a top entry. Nevertheless, New Vegas' first downloadable add-on, Dead Money, requires you to make your way through trap-infested streets and corridors, where you must keep your eyes peeled and your ears keen, lest you miss the signs of the game's deadly hazards. The focus on careful exploration sometimes acts as a strength; at other times, a weakness. Escaping a mine-infested street can make for tense progress, which in turn leads to a pleasant feeling of relief should you make it through unharmed. On the other hand, these constant dangers eventually lead to frustration because the labyrinthine and monotonous levels suck the joy out of exploration. Fallout: New Vegas - Dead Money too often stresses the main game's worst qualities. For example, it's incredible that developer Obsidian Entertainment thought to include several jumping bits, considering the game engine's terrible, unresponsive jumping mechanics. Fortunately, great voice acting and intriguing new characters provide a counterpoint to the flaws and inspire you to push ahead regardless of the frustrations.

We just don’t understand the point of releasing this kind of DLC for this kind of game – other than milking more revenue out of fans and putting people off the idea of trading their copy in once the main game is done. Fallout: New Vegas is a game set in a huge, detailed world with dozens of cleverly interwoven quests and a real sense of freedom and meaningful choices throughout. Dead Money is none of that.

Instead, Dead Money is a standalone, linear series of quests set across a few bland, samey maze-like environments, with very little in the way of freedom, choice or fun. It’s a new piece of New Vegas with none of New Vegas’s strengths included. But New Vegas’s bugs, glitches and crashes? Oh yeah, it’s got those.

Thursday - December 23, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Dead Money Reviews @ IGN and Eurogamer

by Aries100, 23:02

The IGN 6.5/10 review talks about some nasty bugs, they've met while playing this DLC.

Typical of Fallout games, there are performance issues and game-breaking bugs that seriously detract from the experience. There's also a random difficulty spike halfway through that can be really frustrating. The game switches from a stealth focus to combat-heavy, but with such limited ammo and supplies, fighting off waves and waves of overly aggro ghosts isn't much fun.

The review at Eurogamer 7/10 talks about a frustrating experience while gaming; quantity over quality is offered, they think. Here's a snippet where they talk about how the game's elements become annoying:

All these elements are used to herd you along, but they can become annoying – particularly when their use combines with the maze-like streets of the villa exterior. Having less than ten seconds to locate and destroy a radio before your head explodes is exciting the first few times, but by the end it's become a chore and one that reduces one of Fallout's greatest pleasures – exploration – to a frustrating save-and-reload routine.

Wednesday - December 22, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Dead Money Review @ Gamer Limit

Gamer Limit is the first site we've seen with a review of Dead Money for F:NV. The score is 7/10, with the author questioning the value, high difficulty and lack of loot. Here's a bit on the writing:

In spite of some mechanical issues, the writing for Dead Money is on par with the quality of New Vegas. All of the characters have their own demons to deal with, and I really enjoyed talking to them at great length, as well as dealing with their fates at the end of the package. While your team’s backstory and narrative is fleshed out, the actual quest isn’t as engaging – like the Resident Evil series, the bulk of your information is going to come from various notes and computer logs – not from the events of the main story. While there are a few key tidbits here and there that really bring the narrative together at the end, a lot of players will most likely glance over them. In the interest of not spoiling the game for everyone, I don’t want to talk about the story more than that, as pretty much anything else I could reveal would ruin it.

Tuesday - December 21, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Dead Money Released

by Dhruin, 22:54

Dead Money has been released for the X360:

Hi!

We’re pleased to announce that Dead Money, the first downloadable content for Fallout: New Vegas, is now available on Xbox LIVE!

As the victim of a raw deal you must work alongside three other captured wastelanders to recover the legendary treasure of the Sierra Madre Casino. In Dead Money, your life hangs in the balance as you face new terrain, foes, and choices. It is up to you how you play your cards in the quest to survive.

Dead Money is available for 800 Microsoft points. For more information on Fallout: New Vegas or Dead Money please visit http://fallout.bethsoft.com.

Wednesday - December 08, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Contrarian Corner @ IGN

by Dhruin, 22:46

A sort of second-review-slash-commentary on Fallout: New Vegas is up at IGN, titled Contrarian Corner. I noticed it in the PC section but the author played the console edition, for what that's worth, and clearly isn't used to RPGs. Still, he seems to appreciate other aspects:

New Vegas has a traditional video game story, and all of its sub-stories are spelled out with familiar emotions and moments of conflict, but it resonates in a way that film and prose stories are incapable of. Rather than give privilege to an individual story, New Vegas creates an authored environment of interrelations in which players perceive common threads in hundreds of isolated happenings. All stories merge into a world view, rather than a single plot. Most remarkably, every major class of life has a sympathetic voice in New Vegas. The special strain of Super Mutant that's become addicted to using Stealth Boys in an early mission, gains a noble spokesperson in the later game. So too ghouls, various gang members, and factions that might be condemned as bullet fodder in any other game. There is a reason to help everyone, and there is a reason that everyone you meet can be made your enemy.

Thursday - November 25, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Review @ GameBanshee

While I have made a lot of comparisons to the Fallout franchise throughout this review, I haven't really addressed how it compares to Fallout 3. Well, to begin with, it really isn't "just a large expansion pack" for Fallout 3. One might get that impression after a short period of gaming, but if you sit down for a few extended sessions or have even a half-professional gaming eye, you'll soon note that Obsidian's intent in design is much different from Bethesda's in many key ways. These have been described above, and what they come down to is that where Fallout 3 was focused on offering an experience without any barriers for exploration and enjoyment, New Vegas tries to grab back further to Fallout 1 and 2's roots. Not only is it more different from Fallout 3 than a casual glance would admit, it's also an enormous game, easily the size of Fallout 3 in world exploration, and a whole lot bigger when it comes to depth and breadth of quests and factions.

When I start comparing the two, the first notable point of reference is the writing, simply because New Vegas' writing is very superior to Fallout 3's. Fallout 3 is a low standard to begin with, but as long as you don't expect too much from the main story, New Vegas offers some of the best writing of any recent RPG. The fact that it also does so much to improve the RPG mechanics and their effect on the world means it is much closer to being a game where your character build matters, and therefore more of a joy for role-playing enthusiasts than Fallout 3 was. To put it simply: Fallout: New Vegas isn't just a superior Fallout title, it's also a superior RPG.

Wednesday - November 24, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Details on Fallout's First DLC

by Skavenhorde, 15:39

Bethesda has released a few details about Dead Money, the first DLC for Fallout: New Vegas. Dead Money is set in the Sierra Madre, an extravagant resort that was going to be the greatest casino in the west. That was before the bombs fell and the place locked down tight:

Dead Money is set in the Sierra Madre, an opulent and extravagant resort that was supposed to be the greatest casino in the west – except that it never opened. Bombs fell before the gala opening, and the Sierra Madre froze in time, its state of the art security system locking the place up tight. Nothing could get in, and none of the guests could escape. Years passed. The climate control and air conditioning system within the facility began to spit toxins into the surrounding city, causing a slow cloud and haze to form over the area - which proved lethal to anyone who tried to explore the city. Only a mysterious group called the Ghost People survived to call the city home, trapped inside what appeared to be hazmat suits and never speaking to their victims... only capturing them alive and dragging them away to the depths of the city deep within the Cloud.

And so the Sierra Madre faded from the history books, only occasionally being seen in posters across the wastes, until it took on mythic ghost story status... a supposed "City of Gold" in the Mojave Wasteland where all the treasures of the Old World were rumored to be held. It was kept alive as a late-night saloon story by prospectors who'd claimed to have found maps leading there... and were willing to part with the "map" for a few caps. Or a drink. Or a warm place to sleep.

............................................

Can you share details on some of the new creatures/enemies players will encounter?

This being an extension of Fallout: New Vegas, players will encounter several unique characters, each with their own motivations, all of whom will have to work together if any of them are going to survive. Aside from just struggling with their would-be companions, the courier will also have to deal with the mysterious Ghost People as well as the casino's substantial defense systems.

Tuesday - November 23, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Review @ NMA

New Vegas is a huge game. I can probably write another 6 pages examining New Vegas’s various aspects, but I’d rather play the game some more. Like any other game, it’s far from being perfect and has many flaws. If you share my opinion that quest design is the most important aspect of an RPG, then you’ll like New Vegas a lot. If you think that RPGs are all about character system and/or combat, your opinion will depend not so much on New Vegas, but on whether or not you liked Fallout 3.

I think it’s an excellent RPG and when it comes to shaping your story and making decisions, instead of following a pre-determined path, New Vegas can easily compete with the original games and is definitely top 10 material. If the combat was more challenging, and surviving in the wasteland wasn’t so disappointingly easy, the game could actually have competed for the #1 spot.

November 17, 2010 (Rockville, MD) – Bethesda Softworks®, a ZeniMax® Media company, today announced that Dead Money, the first downloadable content for Fallout®: New Vegas™, will be available exclusively on Xbox LIVE® for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft beginning December 21, 2010.

“We’re pleased to give fans a chance to expand their experience in Fallout: New Vegas this December with Dead Money,” said Pete Hines, VP of PR and Marketing for Bethesda Softworks. “The release of Dead Money illustrates our commitment to creating entertaining add-on content for players to enjoy in already massive games like Fallout: New Vegas.”

As the victim of a raw deal you must work alongside three other captured wastelanders to recover the legendary treasure of the Sierra Madre Casino. In Dead Money, your life hangs in the balance as you face new terrain, foes, and choices. It is up to you how you play your cards in the quest to survive.

Fallout: New Vegas, the follow-up to Fallout 3 – the 2008 Game of the Year – brings this beloved franchise to a location only Fallout could do justice: Vegas. Fallout: New Vegas takes all the action, humor and post-apocalyptic grime and grit of this legendary series, and raises the stakes.

Reviews of Fallout: New Vegas have called the game as “an utterly essential purchase” (MSN UK) and as “addictively, rambunctiously fun” (Entertainment Weekly). The Associated Press awarded it a 4 out of 4 stars and said “Bottom Line: It’s a Blast”, while GameSpy gave it 4.5 out of 5 stars and called Fallout: New Vegas “one of the best games of the year.”

Published by Bethesda Softworks and developed at Obsidian Entertainment, Dead Money,has not yet been rated by the ESRB. It will be available for 800 Microsoft points.

Fallout: New Vegas has been rated M for Mature by the ESRB. For more information on Fallout: New Vegas, including the game’s downloadable content, please visit http://fallout.bethsoft.com.

Friday - November 12, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Neoseeker's Contest

by Skavenhorde, 20:50

I'm not sure if this will interest too many people, but you can win a free copy of Fallout: New Vegas from Neoseeker. You tweet a message and you'll be in the running to win a copy of Fallout: New Vegas from Steam. The contest ends November 15th. Here are the rules:

Prize

Fallout: New Vegas (x3) for the PC via Steam

Rules

* One entry per person

* You must be following our Neoseeker twitter account

* Must include your neoseeker username in the tweet

Users who do not adhere to the rules will be disqualified

How to Win

Tweet the following:

USERNAME didn't get to go to Vegas last time! @Neoseeker I want #Fallout, take me to #Vegas! (http://neo.ly/dk3kWM)

replace USERNAME with your neoseeker username

Draw Date

November 15th, 2010

* Prizes not claimed within 5 days of contact are void; a new winner will be picked

Fallout: New Vegas - PC Version Patched

The incremental update (v 1.2.0) we mentioned late last week should now be up on Steam.

These are the issues it covers.

- Companions now show up as waypoints on the map- Companions will always fast travel with you, unless told to wait or sent away- Crafting menu should filter valid (bright) recipes to the top of the list- Fix: DLC error/save corruption- Fix: Stuttering with water effects- Fix: Severe performance issues with DirectX. - Fix: Controls temporarily disabled after reloading Cowboy Repeater while crouched- Fixed crash using the Euclid C-Finder while having the Heave Ho perk- Fix: Entering the strip after Debt Collector causes crash and autosave corruption- Fix: Using Mojave Express dropbox can cause DLC warnings- Fixed crash when buying duplicate caravan cards from a vendor in a single transaction - Fix: Sitting down while looking down a weapon's ironsights leaves player control locked- Fix: If a companion is knocked uncon. with broken limbs they stay broken on respawn- Fix for varmint night scope effect persisting in kill cam.- Fix for giving companions armor that adds STR does not increase their carry weight- Fix NPC Repair menu displays DAM as DPS- Having NPC repair service rifle with forged receiver decreases CND.

As mentioned previously, we still have a comprehensive update coming for PC, 360, and PS3.

There's an additional post about potential problems:

After updating to v 1.2.0, if you're having issues opening New Vegas, try re-verify the files.

Quote

1) Open Steam2) Right click on Fallout: New Vegas3) Hit Properties4) Click the "Local Files" tab5) Click on "Verify Integrity of Game Cache"

Monday - November 08, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - 5 Million Shipped

by Dhruin, 20:32

Bethsoft sent us the PR below announcing 5 million copies of Fallout: New Vegas have shipped. Note that this is sell-in, not sell-through - but the PR does specify "despite the large launch quantities for this title, we have already received substantial re-orders from our retail partners".

November 8, 2010 (Rockville, MD) – Bethesda Softworks®, a ZeniMax Media company, announced today that its highly anticipated title, Fallout®: New VegasTM, has enjoyed record sales at launch, reflecting the huge consumer demand for the game. Five million units of Fallout: New Vegas were shipped worldwide for the Xbox 360®video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system, and Games for Windows®, with a heavy volume of digital downloads, representing well over $300 million in retail sales. In addition, the Fallout: New Vegas strategy guide was one of Amazon’s best sellers among all books.

“We are delighted by the reception Fallout: New Vegas has received from fans around the world,” said Vlatko Andonov, president of Bethesda Softworks.” Despite the large launch quantities for this title, we have already received substantial re-orders from our retail partners, underscoring the tremendous popularity of this highly entertaining game. We believe Fallout: New Vegas will be the “must buy” title for gamers throughout the holiday season.”

Reviews of Fallout: New Vegas have called the game as “an utterly essential purchase” (MSN UK) and as “addictively, rambunctiously fun” (Entertainment Weekly). The Associated Press awarded it a 4 out of 4 stars and said “Bottom Line: It’s a Blast”, while GameSpy gave it 4.5 out of 5 stars and called Fallout: New Vegas “one of the best games of the year.”

Fallout: New Vegas, the follow-up to Fallout 3 – the 2008 Game of the Year – brings this beloved franchise to a location only Fallout could do justice: Vegas. Fallout: New Vegas takes all the action, humor and post-apocalyptic grime and grit of this legendary series, and raises the stakes. Fallout®: New Vegas, developed at Obsidian Entertainment, has been rated M for Mature by the ESRB. For more information on Fallout: New Vegas, visit http://fallout.bethsoft.com.

Saturday - November 06, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - New Patches Incoming

We wanted to give you guys a heads-up regarding the latest progress on Fallout: New Vegas updates.

We’ve come up with solutions for the Xbox 360 save issue folks are reporting, along with a number of other issues being reported. We’re currently running final testing and certification on a comprehensive patch for all three platforms (PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3), so we’ll have something available in the coming weeks. When we have more details, we’ll let you know.

In the meantime, an incremental update for PC should be going up by early next week that will fix the save corruption issues and problems with companions, as well as improve performance for NVIDIA users and resolve some issues reported with Havok.

In games that give you the freedom to be good or bad, which role do you enjoy more?I’m always the good guy. I tried playing the bad guy once in KOTOR2 and I felt REALLY uncomfortable choosing the “bad” dialogue options. It just really doesn’t fit my personality and I didn’t have fun, so now I only play the good guy. That being said, I occasionally enjoy going on a rampaging massacre… provided I have saved beforehand, of course.

Fallout: New Vegas - Art Interview, Competition

GameBanshee writes they have an art interview for Fallout: New Vegas that was writen prior to release. Art director Joe Sanabria and lead concept artist Brian Menze answer their questions:

GB: New Vegas seems to come across a bit brighter than Fallout 3, thanks to such elements as the lights on The Strip and the lighter color of the sky. From an art design standpoint, why did you feel it was necessary to introduce some additional color to the post-nuclear world?

Brian: Some of us, myself included, have worked on previous Fallout titles and have always wanted to introduce a bit more color to the world of Fallout. As an artist, brown sometimes gets very challenging to use over and over again without getting really repetitive, so the artists were thankful that we had an opportunity to add some color to FNV. Though, we tried to keep those splashes of color where it looked natural, as we didn't want to make Fallout into something else. Fallout has a very distinct look and we, of course, wanted to maintain that.

Joe: I work with the project director, associate producers, level designers, programmers and on occasion the sound designers on a daily bases.

To bring an idea from a concept to in-game, can range from simple to pretty complicated. A complex concept like say the Strip, will require a team to coordinate on a bunch of tasks, over a few months.

To keep it manageable we break up the work into a series of small goals. In the case with the Strip, at first we just focus on the scale of the structures and the layout, afterwards we then focus on getting the textures and materials dialed in, and then work on setting up the lights and adding AI and scripted events etc. During which we are making optimizations to the art and design to make sure it's running without any issues.

...and Duck and Cover let us know about their short story contest. We might be bit late now but timezones do that sometimes:

Today is the last day to enter DAC's short story competition for a chance to win a copy of Fallout: New Vegas for the PS3 or Xbox. Go here to see the details of the contest and submit it before midnight GMT tonight!

Tuesday - November 02, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Tips and Mods @ Bethblog

by Dhruin, 21:53

The Bethblog has a Tips, Mods and More post that rounds up some of the "best of..." mod articles and so on around the web. We've posted most of them previously but if you missed them or need some tips, head over.

Fallout: New Vegas - PCGamer's 25 Best Mods

by Skavenhorde, 14:38

PCGamer offered up their picks for the 25 best mods for Fallout: New Vegas. I did not expect to see these kinds of lists for at least another month or so, but it seems like we have some busy bees out there.

#25 Looks to me as the best out of the bunch next to Fellout. I'll be using this one on my next playthrough if it's compatible with Arwen's mod.

25. Wasteland Unlocked

This is an esp file packaged with Black Company's Harder Hardcore pack. It's a giant set of modular esp files that tweak enormous amounts of entities, so I won't recommend you just use them all if you're using some of the mods I've recommended so far, for fear of conflicts.

Just use WastelandUnlocked.esp, and if you don't mind a smarter AI, use SettingsTweaks.esp too. It'll open up the wasteland like never before, adding monsters and wild animals that you'd normally only find at really high levels, spawning rare high level items (or just trash) in dumpsters, and lowering the level requirements for many recipes that'll help you cope with the newfound threat. It also removes lots of stimpaks from the world and replaces them with the bits to make new ones.

Fallout: New Vegas - Eight Things That Would Make BIS Proud

Fallout juxtaposes bleakness with a sense of humour – Vault Boy, the grinning face of post-nuclear disaster, is the symbol of this attitude. Deep in the mountains, up a trail miles away from anywhere else and in a well-protected enclosure, is the lair of an insane super-mutant called Tabitha who likes to wear wigs and 50s-style glasses, and is engaged in a romantic relationship with her service robot. There's a ghoul mechanic kept prisoner up there whose notes detail another super-mutant's rage at his inability to fix his tiny toy car. And yet, behind the humour, there's a touch of pathos in the entries on the employee terminals, which preserve the moments before and during the nuclear holocaust.

Fallout: New Vegas - NMA's Impression

Overall, a positive impression of this latest edition to the Fallout Universe:

Story - The Dutch Ghost

Fallout: New Vegas recycles a lot of elements from Black Isle Studios' Van Buren project, but it is not Van Buren in a different form, telling that game's storyline. It does, however, follow up on the Fallout 1 and 2 storylines to an extent, and narratively is more of a sequel to those games than Fallout 3 was.

The basic premise of playing a courier trying to find out who shot you in the head and why might not sound that thrilling, but it's interesting that where Fallout 1 and 2 were all about saving a community, New Vegas feels a lot more personal. The player doesn't start out with a larger than life goal but rather on a personal one.

.................

Combat and gameplay - WorstUsernameEver

While I personally would have liked to see stats and skills matter more in the gameplay, I was pleasantly surprised by seeing the game favoring different builds - if only to a certain degree - as well as by how difficult it is for me to find a skill that I could call useless. The game's crafting system and the possibility of modifying your weapons are designed in such a way that they never really feel necessary but can be extremely satisfying if you decide to delve into them.

On the matter of the much advertised Hardcore Mode, two things must be said: first, it doesn't really feel 'hardcore', its survival elements are more akin to flavor than something challenging; second, the fact that - in Hardcore - stimpaks take time to heal you forces you to play a little bit more tactically, avoiding the typical 'rush to the enemy and then open Pip-boy and heal yourself' tactic.

New Vegas' primary gameplay element is combat. There's a certain basic degree of tactics to it, with enemies using different strategies, weapons (and weapon categories and ammo types) serving different tactical purposes (the main difference being that between high DPS and high DAM weapons), the control feel decently responsive and the enemies AI routines varied. Unfortunately, it's not always enough, the AI still feels rough around the edges and even with a maxed weapon skill and meeting the strength requirements, the 'feel' of the combat is somewhat off. Overall, provided that you can accept the departure from the original Fallout's design philosophy, Fallout: New Vegas' gameplay is fun.

..................

And Fallout 3 - Brother None

As a Fallout fan, you'll mostly notice New Vegas combines a less nonsensical take on Fallout lore with a kind of light-hearted post-post-apocalypse similar to Fallout 2. The writing is miles beyond Fallout 3 and that's a saving grace for many fans, as is its increased dedication to RPG mechanics. I feel the mechanics and engine's shortcomings keep it from being "the Fallout 3 that was supposed to be", but it's certainly a lot better than Fallout 3, and quite probably the best thing that could happen to the franchise after Bethesda purchased it.

As the technology that powers the game is basically so ancient, you won't need a particularly powerful PC to run it. A dual-core CPU along with something along the lines of a 9800GT should serve you well. However, if you do buy the PC game, you should expect to find yourself consulting enthusiast sites to get the game running decently on your setup.

Two years ago, we played Fallout 3 on a 2.4GHz Q6600 quad-core system with 2GB RAM and a 512MB NVIDIA 8800GT. Our New Vegas rig was a 3.33GHz overclocked i7 working in combination with the awesome might of an NVIDIA GTX480 and utilising 3GB RAM. And performance wasn't much better. It seems that the Gamebryo tech that powers both Oblivion and Fallout 3/New Vegas hasn't really evolved much over the years, and manually fiddling about with the game's .ini files is the only way to iron out performance kinks and get a smooth gameplay experience.

Fallout: New Vegas - Equipment Database @ GameBanshee

Wednesday - October 27, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Early Sales Indications

by Dhruin, 22:01

VGChartz estimates Fallout: New Vegas has 1.4M units in the first week, which puts it 30% higher than Bethsoft's Fallout 3 release at the same time. I'm told VGChartz isn't particularly accurate and it obviously doesn't include PC download versions from Steam and the like but it looks like a great start for F:NV. Official figures will be interesting, if they come.

Tuesday - October 26, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Review Flood #3

by Dhruin, 23:32

Here's a short review flood to catch up a little on Fallout: New Vegas. This is cetainly a mixed batch and I'm going to start with some serious outliers. For those that put stock in such things, the current Metacritic ratings are 86, 84 and 81 for the PC, X360 and PS3 respectively.

There’s a distant sound that can be heard throughout your time with New Vegas. Quieter than the cheery 1930s pop hits that warble from your radio, quieter even than the chirps of night-time insects, or the long gasps of wind blowing across the wasteland. It is the sound of Obsidian phoning this game in. I’m talking long distance, reversed charges, not-giving-a-fuck.

Furthermore, if New Vegas worked, I would also talk about how well the story unfolded, the new faction system, the generous range of activities and quests, and how well new elements of Fallout lore are explored. I would hope to have ultimately talked about whether there were any spectacular set pieces like the giant robot in Fallout 3, and whether it ended with something less contrived than Fallout 3's disappointing conclusion.

But I can't talk about those things, because Fallout New Vegas simply doesn't work. I'd estimate my Xbox 360 locked up maybe once every two hours. The problems started to progress from occasional freezes to recurring freezes in the same place. My last ten hours with New Vegas have been spent troubleshooting, or going back to replay from earlier saves in the hopes that I can somehow work around a crash. But my last problem has effectively brought the game to a screeching, inglorious halt. After investing forty hours in Fallout New Vegas, I've come to a point where there is no possible way to finish the game. Let me repeat that: There is no possible way for me to finish the game. The latest technical error locks up the game whenever I try to enter the Strip, which is not only where my companions are kept, but also where the story quest leads. This happens from more than ten separate saved games. Fallout New Vegas is dead.

Edge, 6/10: "Creatively, New Vegas gets almost everything right. Mechanically and technically, it’s a tragedy. So, it’s a simultaneously rewarding and frustrating game, the gulf between what it is and what it could be a sizeable stretch indeed. Few games have built up a world like New Vegas, and even fewer have squandered such opportunities like this"

IGN UK, 9/10, "Fallout: New Vegas has strong, clever dialogue as well as good writing and quest design. Characters are duplicitous, foul-mouthed, desperate, broken, suave, or all of the above. The voice acting is much better, too, which really helps carry the game's hundreds of interlocking stories"

Hooked Gamers, 9/10, "No reservations"..."I think the best way to describe Fallout: New Vegas is to say it's Fallout 3 with a bit of Alpha Protocol, which makes sense"

Filefront, 91/100, "All in all, Fallout: New Vegas is a triumph for Obsidian"

Strategy Informer, 8.5/10, "Despite minor disappointments however, this is a very engaging title. Those who missed some of the more trademark Fallout elements in Fallout 3 should be somewhat satiated in this game, as Obsidian really bring that flair to the franchise once again"

1Up, B, "However, if you have the patience to make your way through New Vegas in its current state, you'll find a diamond in the buggy rough"

RealGamer, 9.5/10, "Fallout: New Vegas, looks and plays exactly the same as Fallout 3. But the additions that Obsidian have made push the survival angle even further to provide a much more immersive and authentic experience, and just like its predecessor New Vegas proves to be a role-playing masterpiece."

Monday - October 25, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Contest @ Duck and Cover

by Myrthos, 15:19

For those living in the UK, Duck and Cover has two contests in which one of 4 Fallout: New Vegas games can be won (PS3 or Xbox360). You can participate in either a trivia contest or a short story contest.

Friday - October 22, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Blog Entry @ Dark Horse Comics

I'm old enough to have enjoyed playing all the games in the Fallout series, and the promise of some of the original crew members who worked on Fallout 1 & 2 bringing the game back to its superior, quality story telling roots brings out a lust in my heart that is matched only by my covetousness for power army and energy weapons. I'm also old enough to be somewhat leery of diving headlong into such an all-consuming game world. Haven't I sworn off this kind of all-engrossing and addictive game play experience? Wasn't Dragon Age to be the last of the marathon gaming? Since then I've limited myself to the occasional relatively short strategy gaming session. I'm far too mature and responsible at this point to lock myself away for day upon day in a virtual world. Right? I mean, it is an open ended game full of colorful characters, mysterious factional intrigue, an amazing array of weapons, and voice acting by my crush object Felicia Day, creator of The Guild.... Time will tell.

Fallout: New Vegas - Open Letter

As you may have seen, we released a patch over Steam for PC users last night. While we didn’t release a full changelist, the patch contains quest and scripting fixes. It’s not a minor hotfix, it contains over 200 fixes in all. We are in the final stages of testing this update on both 360 and PS3 and we hope to have them out to users very soon.

We are also pleased to say that we have just released a second fix for PC users to address the autosave and quicksave issues that some people were encountering. That particular issue was never seen prior to release and it was extremely difficult to reproduce reliably, even after the game had launched. In order to fix this problem we have had to disable Steam Cloud functionality. It has been turned off, and we won't turn it back on until we're absolutely sure it will not cause any more problems. Please restart your Steam client to make sure you get the update.

We are also working directly with hardware manufacturers to improve performance for certain video cards. This is a driver issue, and not directly related to the game.

On consoles, we are aware that a small group of 360 users are seeing a DLC warning which is preventing you from loading save games. We are absolutely looking into this bug now, along with other reports of save game corruption. It is our highest priority right now that we find out what is causing it. In the meantime, we recommend you save often, and revert to an older save if this occurs.

As far as general memory and instability, you should see an improvement once the patch goes live, but we are continuing to work on this based on user feedback.

We want everyone to know that we are monitoring the forums and cataloging every single issue we see reported. We’re reading forum posts, we’re checking Twitter, and we’re reading Facebook comments. We aren’t able to reply to most threads, but we’re listening. If we see an issue, we have people here trying to reproduce it so we can fix it.

While there are definitely legitimate issues out there, we wanted to take a moment to address a couple of things that have been reported as “bugs.”

The now infamous Doc Mitchell video, while very funny (and horrifying) was not a bug. Unfortunately during our launch day, there was a brief window where Steam was pushing out corrupt or incorrect files. In the event that a user wound up with a corrupt meshes.bsa file, they would get that error. It was easily (and instantly) corrected by simply re-validating your files with Steam. At most, a handful of people ever saw that issue, and even then, only for a moment before fixing it.

We have seen forum posts where people are claiming they are not getting all of their perks. Again, this is not a bug. In Fallout: New Vegas, you receive perks every other level, not every level as you do in Fallout 3.

And finally, a quick tip: Be aware of your faction status before assuming the game is broken. Factions will react very strongly to you based on your current armor. If you’re wearing Powder Ganger or Caesar’s Legion armor, you will be shot on sight by the NCR (and vice versa). Also note that there are groups of renegade Powder Gangers (known simply as “Escaped Convicts”) who will shoot you regardless of your faction status.

Please post any issues you are having to our forums and we’ll do our best to fix them as quickly as possible.

Thursday - October 21, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - J.E. Sawyer on Bugs

NMA points to some comments by Josh Sawyer on the Something Awful forums about the bugs in F:NV.

Someone earlier asked if we (Obsidian/Bethesda) knew about the PC bugs that people are currently experiencing. I can't comment on every bug, but I can comment on the higher profile ones:

* Auto/quicksaving bug - I can honestly say that we never saw that bug or heard it reported prior to release. I played the game primarily (and extensively) on the Xbox 360 and PC (I also played on the PS3, but not as much) and never saw anything like that. We are looking into it right now because obviously it's (very) bad.

* NVIDIA + water = lol - This is a known issue that was introduced with NVIDIA's drivers as of (I think) two revs ago. It can affect Fallout 3 as well. We are still discussing it with NVIDIA.

* NPC faces = slow framerate - I hadn't heard of this prior to launch, but I'm going to talk to Frank (our lead programmer) about it.

* CTD Apocalypse - CTDs are often very hard to diagnose, so honestly maybe we have seen "your" issue before, maybe we haven't. These are the hardest to figure out. My apologies. We have to take them on a case by case basis.

* Video Card N + Sound Card Y + This Driver = Death/Bad Framerate - Chances are high that we didn't know that a certain combination of hardware/drivers/some other software would result in something bad happening because, quite frankly, PC compatibility testing is logistically really, really, really hard. That's not an excuse, but I hope it serves as an explanation. Anything that seems to affect a significant number of users and is systemic is something we can hopefully look into.

Please don't take my lack of commentary on bugs to mean that I don't care about them. I just want to avoid hazarding guesses and doing remote amateur troubleshooting. Bethesda's support/testing teams are coordinating known bugs and new reported bugs through to us. I know it's frustrating. I hate seeing people experiencing bugs. We are addressing them as we learn more information about them.

Fallout: New Vegas - PC Patch Released

by Dhruin, 08:24

The first patch for the PC version of Fallout: New Vegas has been released, with console versions to follow soon. The details are vague ("quest and scripting issues") but here's part of the post on the Bethblog:

Unless you’ve been stuck in a Vault, you probably know that Fallout: New Vegas was released yesterday. We’re thrilled that so many people are enjoying the game, but we also realize there are a few issues thatyou guys have been reporting.

We have just released an automatic update for the PC version of Fallout: New Vegas that resolves quest and scripting issues. Be sure to restart Steam to ensure the update is downloaded on your next launch of the game. We’re also working hard to make this update available for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game as soon as possible, and will let you know as soon as we have the dates they’ll be up.

Also covered by following the link is preorder bonus issues with the PS3 and for Aussies.

Fallout: New Vegas - Patches Incoming

Patches are coming. Pete Hines, marketing man at Fallout studio Bethesda Softworks, tells Kotaku that "We are currently working on releasing patches/updates as quickly as possible for Fallout: New Vegas, for all platforms. Announcements regarding the patches are forthcoming." He advises anyone seeing this head-turning bug to re-verify their files on Steam, as the issue is due to a "corrupt mesh file." Also notable: The head-turning bug here was highlighted two days ago in a blog post by one of the game's producers, who identified it as a known bug that was "eradicated" prior to the game's official release.

Just wanted to let everyone know, we are currently working on releasing patches/updates as quickly as possible for Fallout: New Vegas, for all platforms. Announcements regarding the patches are forthcoming.

...and on Steamcloud problems:

Spoke with some folks at our office and if you were experiencing issues with Steam Cloud that affected your save games or game settings, these should now be resolved.

To check to see if you're still having an issue, open the Fallout: New Vegas launcher. Make a change to any setting and quit out of your game. If your setting changes haven't saved, quit out of Steam and restart the application. This should then solve the issue.

In the event that you're unable to to load the launcher at all (and it's crashing), delete all of your .INI files for New Vegas and then relaunch the game.

Tuesday - October 19, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Review Flood #2

by Dhruin, 20:14

Here's Round #2. Again, the content is highly praised and most of the scores are very good but bugs are a consistent theme - albeit not enough to blight most scores.

PC Gamer sent in their review (84%), which mostly praises the game but chides not developing the technology further and says "I had a lot of fun, but I never uncovered anything as wonderful as Fallout 3’s Oasis or Little Lamplight".

FileFront, 91/100, "All in all, Fallout: New Vegas is a triumph for Obsidian. Once again, they’ve taken on a beloved franchise and managed to do it justice in the sequel. From a purely technical standpoint, New Vegas does have some issues, but a game isn’t all about the technical side of things. It’s about the experience of playing the game, and on that front, New Vegas delivers in spades. It’s easily one of my favorite games of the year to date, despite all of the technical glitches. If you liked Fallout 3, you owe it to yourself to play this one all the way through. It’s a most worthy successor."

We The Gamerz, - Buy - The author hated the original and thought this game would be the same old thing as the last one. He found out how wrong he was. He goes into the setting, hardcore mode (he played it this way), improved Vats sytem, graphics, sound, quests and more. It's a positive review from someone who didn't care for the original Fallout 3.

Charleston Gazette, 9.5/10 - "There are other noteworthy additions, like the ability to start campfires and cook your own food, new magazines that grant temporary stat bonuses, a number of different gambling minigames, the Companion Wheel that lets you issue commands to anyone who may join you on your journey, and plenty of new perks and skills (I highly recommend selecting the Wild Wasteland perk.)"

Hooked Gamers, 9.5/10 - "Unfortunately, the PC version of New Vegas I played wasn't as stable as Fallout 3. It inexplicably crashed a few times, which I thought would prove annoying at first, but it never really bothered me. Frequent quick saves and auto saves ensured I always got back in with minimal repetition."

TQCast, 4.5/5 - "Game-play: At it’s core, Fallout: New Vegas is a HIGHLY polished Fallout 3, but there’s so much more surrounding that core. Yes, the Karma system is still in tact, and it has some implications – but more than that is the faction reputation system they now have. Before you even leave your first town you have a choice to make: save one man from a gang, or help the gang kill him. Help him and you get discounts in the town, and everyone there is hunky-dory with you, but the gang and all it’s friends really don’t like you; help the gang, and it’s the opposite."

G4 TV, 4/5 - "As with any Fallout game, the single-player storyline is secondary to the myriad of sub-quests that you’ll discover as you explore the wastelands. The various gangs and groups will open and close possible missions depending upon your standing, but either way, there’s a huge amount to see and do in the Mojave. That said, the quality of the writing in New Vegas – which is to say, the degree to which these stories will compel you as you play through them – is only a scant shadow of what players have come to expect from Fallout 3."

Game Informer, 8.5/10 - "But even with bugs, glitches, and mundane moments, Fallout: New Vegas is great fun. The gunplay (even with a new iron sight targeting system) is as flawed and inaccurate as before, but combat through V.A.T.S. remains one of my favorite things to do in a game. I love the strategy tied to it, and the payoff (usually in the form of a head exploding in slow motion) always feels great. When it comes down to combat encounters, Obsidian delivered in a big way."

Just Push Start, 4.5/5 - "While Fallout: New Vegas may feel like an expansion to Fallout 3, it offers something that fans of Fallout cannot resist. The lengthy adventure, epic story, and the plethora of quests give gamers more reasons to spend time on the game. It may not win a Game of the Year award but it’s one of those games that we are considering. Fallout fans that played Fallout 3 might feel like they’re just playing an expansion, but it’s still worth the purchase!"

Gamepro, 4.5 stars - "Fallout 3 introduced us to a bold new vision of a post-apocalyptic America and provided one of the most satisfying RPG experiences in years. Obsidian’s worthy follow-up brings the action west to the bright lights of New Vegas, and while it doesn’t perfect the franchise formula, it adds an intriguing new chapter to the series lore."

Gaming Nexus, 4.5/5 stars - "Fallout: New Vegas does seem more like Fallout 3.5, but that’s not a bad thing. Obsidian Entertainment has added some nice features to game and the story isn’t too bad. There’s more than enough content here though to justify the full price tag in my opinion. For fans of Fallout 3, this is a nice purchase as I enjoyed myself back in the world of Fallout again. Considering that each DLC of Fallout 3 costed $10 and averaged around 6 hours of gameplay, Fallout: New Vegas adds 100+ hours for $60 with some improvements making it worth it even if you consider it to be a minor improvement over Fallout 3 in terms of technology."

Straight, Enjoyed it - "In truth, most of the added gameplay features will be appealing only to hard-core RPG fans. Which may be why the game includes a Hardcore Mode. When playing with this setting activated, your character requires food, water, and rest on a regular basis. Ammunition has weight, so it factors into your inventory choices. Playing Hardcore means that you’ll have to carefully manage resources and be more strategic about moving from place to place. It’s not for everyone—it certainly isn’t for me—but there will be those who are up for the challenge"

Feed Your Console, 10/10 - "The game will no doubt get criticism from people who say the graphics engine needs to be upgraded – It still looks great - or ”it’s too much like Fallout 3″… Who cares? Isn’t everything that we loved about Fallout 3 the reason we’re here in the first place? More of everything that worked is always a good thing.

It’s easy to see there was influence in the development cycle from a few key pieces of the original development team from the beginning of the series. They lovingly came back to the wastelands and brought us a masterpiece of gaming. All has been forgiven Obsidian. We’ll pretend that Alpha Protocol didn’t happen."

RPGfan, 85% - "There's lots to like in Fallout: New Vegas. There's a boatload of new content, with players looking at a minimum of 15 hours of gameplay, even if they just try to burn through the base story content. In doing so, they'd be missing out on some great content, though. I'm not a completionist by any means, but Fallout: New Vegas' sidequests and stories are absolutely worth playing through. There's no doubt that I was frustrated by the game's numerous bugs – especially when it barred my progress in the game – but, honestly, that seems to be par for the course for Obsidian. And for my part, I would choose to play a game that is an unpolished gem rather than a polished turd any day of the week. There's not a part of Fallout: New Vegas that could be called a turd, and if you're a fan at all of western-styled RPGs, there is no doubt that this game is worth picking up."

Planet Xbox 360, 8.5/10 - "Trying to play this game without V.A.T.S. is an exercise in reloading your last save. However V.A.T.S. is what sets Fallout apart from other games and is it's unique hook and works so well and is so fun, and that's really the key here. Only when you run out of action points, which isn't often, will you be faced with trying to survive with the clunky unmanageable FPS controls. If this critique is coming off as harsh and negative, I'm sorry, it shouldn't. I actually had a really good time playing through Fallout: New Vegas. During my time I couldn't set the controller down. It's fun and that is ultimately what a game should be about and New Vegas hits it on the head. It's eloquently and elaborately woven mission structure is something that should never be changed, and in fact I would like to see it in other games as well. The Mojave wasteland is packed with memorable locations and characters and is a worthy followup to Fallout 3. I just expected more from New Vegas but in the end it all feels like a giant expansion upon the premise laid out two years ago. Again, not a bad thing if that's what you're looking for, more of the same isn't bad with this formula"

There are more but I'm out of time. A huge thanks to Skavenhorde for preparing most of these and NMA and the Bethblog for some links.

Fallout: New Vegas - Review Flood #1

by Dhruin, 10:34

After having a look around, there are a good number of Fallout: New Vegas reviews out so here's our first collection. In general, most of the articles highly praise the content but note technical issues (note: most of these are X360 reviews). The impact varies, and most seem to suggest these are legacy issues similar to Oblivion and FO3, although some seem to have had more trouble. One outlier see this is little more than an outdated mod but they are definitely the minority.

Joystiq has a positive review but they do take a hard stance on the technical issues and describe the changes made by Obsidian as "cosmetic". Still, they say the experience is worth it. 3.5/5.

Giant Bomb says "if you can accept a partially broken game, Fallout: New Vegas is well-worth the trip". 4/5.

The Adrenaline Vault says "oustanding" and "excels on all levels, and you’ll want to keep playing just to see how the story unfolds". They note only two technical issues. 5/5

Atomic Gamer thinks this is Obsidian's best yet and note the "hugely expanded perk system" and the factions. 9/10.

Ars Technica seems to have been hardest hit by technical problems but they still say "Buy". The pros include 'epic story with excellent writing and acting'.

Gamer's Hell can't get over the dated graphics and the "all too familiar experience. While most of the reviews note the underlying similarities, Gamer's Hell is alone in not appreciating the content. 7/10.

Fallout: New Vegas - Review @ Eurogamer

by Dhruin, 07:24

The first full Fallout: New Vegas review is out and it's a highly positive one from Eurogamer. Some carry-over issues are noted with the aging tech but, overall, the score of 9/10 speaks for itself. An early general snip:

New Vegas may jump across America for its setting, and forward several years in the timeline, but it's a seamless continuation of what Bethesda set in motion in 2008 with Fallout 3. And you can put aside any concerns regarding the decision to hand over to Obsidian for development duties on this spin-off; while the studio stumbled with its fun-but-flawed espionage RPG, Alpha Protocol, there are enough former Black Isle people still roaming its halls to make New Vegas feel authentic, right down to the last detail. In fact, those who felt Fallout 3 deviated too far from the series' role-playing roots may even find they nod appreciatively at some of the deeper elements New Vegas reintroduces.

Obsidian could have restricted its ambition to inheriting Bethesda's game engine and turning out more of the same, and most of Fallout 3's sizeable fanbase would have been quite happy. That it's gone to the trouble of developing both the series' narrative and it gameplay mechanics speaks highly of the studio's attention to detail.

Monday - October 18, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - DLC Announced, Exclusive to X360

by Dhruin, 19:47

Bethsoft has announced the first DLC for Fallout: New Vegas will be available "this holiday season", exclusive to the X360. I'm going to assume this is a console exclusive, meaning it will be available for PC but not for the PS3, although the PR doesn't specify:

BETHESDA SOFTWORKS ANNOUNCES PLANS FOR

FALLOUT®: NEW VEGAS™ ADD-ON GAME CONTENT

First Fallout: New Vegas Downloadable Content Exclusive to Xbox LIVE

October 18, 2010 (Rockville, MD) – Bethesda Softworks®, a ZeniMax® Media company, today announced plans to develop add-on content for Fallout®: New Vegas™, the follow-up to the 2008 Game of the Year, Fallout® 3. The first downloadable content for Fallout: New Vegas will be available this holiday season through Xbox LIVE® for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft.

“We’re excited to continue the partnership between Bethesda and Microsoft, and build on the success of the game add-ons released for Fallout 3 on Xbox LIVE,” said Pete Hines, VP of Marketing and PR of Bethesda Softworks. “Fans will once again be able to continue their experience in the Fallout universe with the add-on packs planned for after the launch of the game.”

Fallout: New Vegas brings this beloved franchise to a location only Fallout could do justice: Vegas. Fallout: New Vegas takes all the action, humor and post-apocalyptic grime and grit of this legendary series, and raises the stakes.

“Bethesda set a high bar with the quality of the Fallout game add-ons,” said Matt Barlow, General Manager, IEB Product Marketing for Microsoft. “We have no doubt that gamers will be thrilled with seeing a new add-on pack extend their adventures with Fallout: New Vegas on Xbox 360 and Xbox LIVE.”

Published by Bethesda Softworks, Fallout: New Vegas is set for release on Xbox 360, PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system, and Games for Windows on October 19th in North America, October 21st in Australia and on October 22nd in Europe.

More details about plans for additional content will be released in the coming weeks.

Fallout®: New Vegas, developed at Obsidian Entertainment, has been rated M for Mature by the ESRB. For more information on Fallout: New Vegas, visit http://fallout.bethsoft.com.

Fallout: New Vegas - Midnight Launches, Digital Unlocks

If you’re looking for a physical copy, Best Buy and GameStop are both opening stores early to accommodate midnight playtime. For a list of all Best Buy midnight openings, check the handy pop-up on this page. If you’re looking to hit up a GameStop when the clock strikes, call your local store to make sure they’re participating.

As for the digital realm, all copies of New Vegas purchased through stores like Steam, GameStop Digital and Direct2Drive will unlock for players in North/Central/South America at 12:01am PST/3:01am EST tomorrow morning. All other territories will see their copies unlock at 12:01 GMT on October 22nd.

Friday - October 15, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - News Roundup #3

Although it is possible to complete your New Vegas experience without personally slaying anyone yourself, much of your time exploring all the backwater settlements, chem-dens, and abandoned ghost towns involve tense interactions with entities that could best be described as “bloody entertaining.” The Mojave Wasteland is filled with a multitude of enemies ranging from the savage to the refined, and by the time you’ve pissed off a major faction or two, you’ll be craving a complete list of every single monstrosity, or faction enemy — along with their Level, Perception, combat skill abilities, favored weapons, and even the likely loot their corpses contain. The guide is an amazing place to find accurate information on those foes you’ll be cleaving, culling, or cutting. But who’s out there in the badlands, waiting to pounce?

Yes there are! We have five different Vaults in the game. They serve as unique dungeons, and depending on what path you follow through the main storyline, you may have to venture into one of them to retrieve something.

Atmosphere is the key ingredient in the Fallout: New Vegas soundscape. From the long-decayed, echoing gunshots to the dense, layered ambiences, these are the sounds that pull the player further into the post-apocalyptic world of the Mojave Wasteland.

My goal for Fallout: New Vegas was to make sure the music fit in seamlessly with this soundscape and would help to subconsciously guide the player through their 100+ hour experience. In order to do this, the music had to match the atmosphere of the world to a T.

We wanted to pay homage to the history of the series and draw a line between Mark Morgan's musical style from Fallout 1 and 2 and Inon Zur's musical direction from Fallout 3. To this end, Inon brought everything full circle in Fallout: New Vegas with a masterful score that perfectly fit the environment.

Apparently some re-mastered Mark Morgan pieces are in the game, which is pretty cool:

I contacted Bethesda and Mark Morgan about including a selection of remastered Fallout 1 and 2 pieces in New Vegas, and all parties were fully on board. I also felt that some of the Fallout 3 tracks should make a return to help forge a synergy between all of the games in the series.

Fallout: New Vegas - News Roundup

What's the expected playtime of New Vegas - with and without sidequests? I generally only give my own experiences as a reference point since I don't want people to be disappointed by a generic game length number. On my last playthrough I spent seventy hours doing the main quest and a large number (maybe thirty five) of the side quests. It's a big game.

Tuesday - October 12, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - New Perks and Interview

by Skavenhorde, 10:38

Gamespot has posted some of the new perks that will be in New Vegas. The new perks are Cowboy, Jury Rigging, Rad Child, Laser Commander, Shotgun Surgeon, Long Haul, Math Wrath, Pack Rat, The Professional and Purifier. Pack Rat makes everything that weighs 2 or less weigh half as much. That sounds good if you plan on carrying a ton of ammo while playing Hardcore Mode.

Plus, Big Download interviewed associate producer Tess Treadwell. If you haven't read the dozens of interviews before or seen the videos from X-Play then this might be of interest. I didn't find out anything new other than they took a few "research" trips to Las Vegas while Josh Sawyer hopped on a motorcyle and drove off into the desert for a few weeks to take pictures of the desert. Here is a snippet from the interview:

In terms of chatting with characters has there been any changes made for Fallout New Vegas?

Dialogue in Fallout: New Vegas is more complex. -- There are a lot more twists and turns you can take in conversations, and there are also a lot of times when certain Skills will open up new dialogue options (for example, you might get an option for your Explosives skill when talking to someone about blowing things up). Even if you won't pass the skill check you'll still see an option, although it'll be obvious using that line will fail. However, failing a skill check line won't bar you from trying again in the future. Faction reputation can also open up new dialogue.

Lastly, I'd say that we have a lot more reactivity from NPCs based on things you've done (or haven't done). Not just as conversation topics, but NPCs will greet you based on your reputation and comment on recent events just as you're walking around.

Fallout: New Vegas - Community Interview

Is there a new side-quest system, or ambient events like Red Dead Redemption, or are set quests only given to set people?

There isn't a new 'system,' but there are a number of side quests. There are also ambient events that you'll see occurring in the world around you, triggered by various things you've done. We're committed to making quests feel unique and "make sense" in the world, so we always associate quests with specific NPCs.

Fallout: New Vegas - Dev Profile @ Bethblog

Favorite part…okay, there’s this scene in the movie Inception (no spoilers, promise) where they bring in a character to be a “dream architect” and they give the character a taste of what it’s like to shape dreams, but then the character leaves abruptly. The line was something like, “Don’t worry, they’ll be back. Once you get a taste of shaping a world nothing else can compare.” That’s my favorite part of designing games.

The first time you put together a level and get the creatures and characters running around the way you want in a game – it’s more than just rewarding on an intellectual level – it’s exciting in a visceral, child-like-wonder sort of way. I haven’t worked on a single project where one designer or another doesn’t call a bunch of people into their office to show them this “cool thing” they just did. And there isn’t a drop of arrogance in the sharing of the thing, just child-like excitement. Grown men and women showing off this amazing or funny or just plain weird thing that is going on in the game-world like children in a playground seeing a lizard for the first time. Favorite part.

Fallout: New Vegas - Dev Diary #4

by Skavenhorde, 15:28

The fourth video from the devs talks about factions. The game has three major factions that will impact the players adventures in the New Vegas area as well as various sub-factions. The video gives details on what they are about and what they are trying to achieve.

J. E. Sawyer stressed the fact that they tried to stay away from clear cut black and white factions and have more of a complex mixture of different people and different factions. The player can interact with any of them or ignore them all and try to be the champion of New Vegas or fight for total anarchy.

Wednesday - October 06, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Blog, GDC Online Panel

It translates into our work day as well -- we live with that every day working on Fallout. Obsidian's worked on a number of franchises over the years, and it's part of the training as a designer that you have to boil down a franchise into not only its game mechanic elements, but the more abstract aspects of what makes a franchise what it is and how to represent it in-game. It's not only the 1950s-view-of-the-future-then-drop-bombs-on-it feel of Fallout, the dark humor, the SPECIAL system, Vaults, Ron Perlman's narration and end slides... Fallout's also about being able to design for choices, about a world where all the options you use to build your character are viable and carry reactivity, where the simplest of actions can make the rounds and be mentioned by people you meet – you'll see that in the reputation system, and the consequences of your actions in the Mojave wasteland.

It's also a testament to Josh Sawyer as project director that he went back through the Fallout games and analyzed what mechanics and hooks that could be incorporated into New Vegas. Traits, certain weapons, caravan companies, character descendants, familiar faces, creatures from the West Coast, the remnants of older factions... seeing them all play out in New Vegas has been a fascinating process, and seeing these older elements in a new light in the Mojave Wasteland has been great to watch and experience.

With all the research conducted and the goals set, Gonzalez set about creating the story brief, an overview of the game's events and characters that gets heavily commented on by other members of the team. Those comments in hand, it was time to revise the story, creating pockets of side quest content, drawing out recurring themes. Gonzalez said it's best not to settle on themes too early. While some are obvious (New Vegas would doubtlessly deal with greed), others may seem right but wind up not fitting on further reflection. For example, Gonzalez said he stayed away from the theme of luck.

"New Vegas isn't about luck," Gonzalez said. "It's about having a rigged game."

Fallout: New Vegas - PC Gamer Preview

PC Gamer has a preview of what's in store for us with Fallout: New Vegas. It talks about the setting, hardcore options, music, dialogue, combat, quests and more. Here are a few snippets:

Playing Fallout: New Vegas in hardcore mode is a revelation. It feels how its already worthy predecessor was meant to. The vast amount of clutter you can sweep into your inventory starts to make sense, as much of it can be sold. Medicine and the new Survival skill suddenly become central, and the blinking lights of a Nuka-Cola machine can signal your salvation.

Something else you'll notice early on (though perhaps not in the opening town of Goodsprings, which is a tad dull) is an overall improvement in characterisation and dialogue. Here, it honestly does feel as though some tenets of the Black Isle legacy are dripping through into the Obsidian melting pot. Sure, dialogue trees remain limited and conversation brief - but through vastly improved voice acting and some genuinely interesting characters, the condensed dialogue feels streets ahead of the often insipid lines Bethesda offered up back in Washington DC.

Fallout: New Vegas - Mapping the Mojave

But what kinds of locations are available to the sight-seeing Courier? Well, some personal favorites include The Devil’s Throat; a giant rock depression filled with Evolved Centaurs, radioactive barrels, and heavy Energy Weapons. There are stretches of lonely highway to trek down passing savaged caravans with Brahmin corpses stinking in the mid-day sun.

There’s a whole mountain wilderness where Super Mutants are the friendliest creatures you’ll face, and hidden pathways to find locations you previously thought inaccessible. There are mines, shacks, ravines, mountains, caves, sweeping plains, dry lakes, rocky promontories, and wild canyons where the thrill of traversing the rugged landscape changes to fear as your hunting rifle jams just before a Legendary Fire Gecko spots you. And that’s before you enter the outskirts of New Vegas itself. Finding out which locations are safe to explore and which are deathtraps filled with Deathclaws is only a glimpse of what the strategy guide offers. Expect a full, complete, and helpful tour of every nook, cranny, and secret safehouse there is to find.

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - Oct. 4, 2010 - Direct2Drive (D2D), a leader in digital distribution of video games, today revealed that www.Direct2Drive.com will serve as the exclusive online home of Bethesda Softworks'® Digital Collector's Edition of Fallout®: New Vegas™. The digital package is available today for pre-order on Direct2Drive and will be available for download in North America on October 19, 2010 and in Europe on October 22, 2010.

In addition to featuring the highly-anticipated game, the Digital Collector's Edition comes complete with All Roads, the 48-page digital graphic novel that was created in conjunction with Dark Horse comics. All Roads introduces the world of New Vegas, a town of dreamers and desperados being torn apart by warring factions vying for complete control of this desert oasis, and a tells an intriguing tale of loyalty and violence that leads right up to the beginning of the game. Penned by Chris Avellone, the game's senior producer, the graphic novel also contains clues to in-game missions. For a limited time only, the exclusive pre-order offer also includes a free bonus "Tribal Pack," which contains special weapons such as throwing spears, armor, a machete and rare venom doses.

"Our goal at Direct2Drive is to offer premium and exclusive content while delivering the best value possible for our community," said Julie Uhrman, vice president and general manager, digital distribution at IGN Entertainment. "Fallout: New Vegas is one of this year's most-anticipated games and we're excited to serve as the premier online destintation where gamers can purchase the unique digital collector's edition."

"The Fallout series has gained a ton of support through the Direct2Drive community over the past few years and we wanted to provide something unique to such loyal fans," said Pete Hines, vice president of PR and marketing at Bethesda Softworks. "The Fallout: New Vegas Digital Collector's Edition offers fans the opportunity to download the game and the graphic novel."

Friday - October 01, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Gold, Sys Reqs

As you may have heard in this week’s episode of The Bethesda Podcast, Fallout: New Vegas is officially finished and off to manufacturing. Congratulations to the team!

The system requirements are shown below in a chart form. Basically, it's a Dual Core 2Ghz and an nVidia 6xxx or Radeon 1300XT -- pretty low.

The Podcast itself is pretty interesting and is focused entirely on New Vegas. Among the things discussed in the 39 odd minutes is you reach the Vegas strip after about 50% of the story line - although it can be reached in 15 minutes - and reaching level 30 is quite an achievement.

Wednesday - September 29, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Interview @ DualShockers

The Obsidian site is pointing out an interview at DualShockers, with Chris Avellone stepping up to answer the questions. A bit on dialogue:

Chad (DS): Will New Vegas include as many (or more?) branching dialog segments than Fallout 3?

Chris (Obsidian): Haven’t counted, the metrics don’t matter as much as the feel of the dialogues, and they definitely feel like they have choices – and many times, reactions to choices outside the dialogues.

There’s a lot of skill checks in conversations (some not for dialogue skills, just ones that showcase expertise, like explosives), checks for faction, and different reactions depending on rep. We definitely have more lines of dialogue and quests, as the areas are thicker on population and factions.

Tuesday - September 28, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Interviews @ GameReactor, GameFreaks

by Dhruin, 22:53

Here are a couple of Fallout: New Vegas interviews via NMA. First, GameReactorTV has a decent video interview with Josh Sawyer. The usual topics are covered but Josh does talk about studying Oblivion and Fallout 3 to get the "density" of the game world right and a few other interesting snippets.

GF:We hear there are various competing factions in New Vegas you can join forces with. How does this affect your character and progression?

LL: The Reputation System might be the biggest new feature in the game. This is the system by which the player can gauge their standing with various groups and locations that call the Mojave Wasteland home. There are so many factions and towns in the game that it would be almost impossible to play through every reputation permutation. By developing a reputation with a specific faction, they will react to you — good or bad — in direct proportion to your actions toward them. If you help the NCR, they are going to assist you throughout the game. If you’re hated in a particular town that’s not strong enough to take you out, they might pay tribute to you. Your standing with factions determines who will ally with you, where you can freely travel, and what perks and benefits you will get.

Friday - September 24, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Interview @ PC Gamer

PC Gamer has an interview with Larry Liberty, senior producer for Fallout: New Vegas. The specific topic is "what's new", so here's an intro snip:

PC Gamer: When Fallout 3 fans finally get to play New Vegas, what are the very first things that they’ll notice have changed? And what has changed, but is a bit more subtle?

Larry Liberty: The most obvious difference people will see when they first step outside into the Mojave Wasteland will be the sky. It’s blue. This small change has a deep impact on the tone of the game. The next thing people are likely to notice is combat, and how far-reaching the changes to real-time combat are like the way strength interacts with weapon skills in a logically consistent manner, how responsive the controller input is. Some equally important changes that won’t be immediately apparent are the overhauled companions (each one has a story arc and quest line, and is each is controlled more easily with the Companion Wheel), new animations (most notably for unarmed combat and running with a two-handed weapon), and there are four primary tracks through the game. Thanks to the Reputation System, there are countless ways to impact the game world.

Thursday - September 23, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Dev Diary #2

Today we’ve released the second video developer diary for Fallout: New Vegas. This time around, the team at Obsidian discuss the tech and weapons of Fallout’s world, as well as how they approached sound design and music for the game.

Why should fans of the "Fallout" franchise get excited about "All Roads?"

It leads right into the opening movie, gives greater background on the people looking to kill you (even if they messed it up once), and as you explore the “Fallout: New Vegas” world, you'll see the exact same path and have a greater understanding of some of the faction politics in the game.

Wednesday - September 22, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Strategy Guide Blog - Survival Skill

Adventuring across the sandstorms of the Ivanpah Dry Lake, or the rocky terrain around Bitter Springs can be arduous. Partly due to the vicious critters — ranging from packs of Coyotes to lolloping Alpha Deathclaws – but mainly because you need to keep a constant check on your health, especially in Hardcore Mode. Although it’s certainly possible to live off Stimpaks on the easier difficulty modes, real wasteland explorers expend their tag skill points on Survival, a brand-new Skill that enables you to enjoy the natural (and mutated) wonders of the stark, rugged Mojave and then exploit those resources for fun and profit. Welcome to the world of Crafting.

Tuesday - September 21, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Preview, Interview @ Planet Fallout

The dialog system, something that you've known a lot of success in games like Planescape: Torment, changed a bit from Fallout 3, can you explain us more on what changed and what remains untouched?

We added more skill checks for various skills (Barter, Explosives, Sneak, Guns), displayed the success values for skill checks, added some stupid-speak at points for low INT characters, and changed the text of the line if your skill isn't high enough (as an example: adding [Crappy Speech] "uh... maybe... you'd be making a mistake?" vs. [Good Speech skill] "You pull that trigger on someone that's got NCR's full support, you'll be making a mistake.")

Torment's dialogue system is a scaled-down version of what was in Fallout 1, without the empathy perk and expanded alignment reactivity to compensate for D+D's alignment axis. There's not many other comparisons between Torment and Fallout aside from possibly companion depth in New Vegas and the quest solutions for different character builds, so I don't want to misrepresent either title by drawing any other comparisons between them. Torment owes a lot to Fallout, and not the other way around.

Thursday - September 16, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Dev Diary, Interview, Preview

by Dhruin, 21:09

Here's a handful of Fallout: New Vegas items as we start to eye the release in October. First, GameSpot has a video dev diary, with Feargus Urquhart, John Gonzalez, Josh Sawyer and Lawrence Liberty discussing the story and themes a ~2:30 video.

I realize I haven't given you any new information about Fallout: New Vegas, no thanks to the language barrier. I don't know where I was, who I met or what the point of the Japanese demo was. But I can tell you this. Fallout: New Vegas feels comfortingly similar to its predecessor. Even with the story, context and dialogue stripped away, New Vegas pulled me back in to the world of the Wasteland, even if it was just to beat everyone senseless for a few minutes.

AL: It's been shown that the Nightkin are back in New Vegas. What made you bring these Super Mutants back, and have you brought back any other enemy types that were not seen in Fallout 3?

JS: I always thought Nightkin were underutilized in Fallout and seeing the Crimson Dragoons in the Fallout 3 DLC Operation: Anchorage made me think it would be pretty easy to use a similar cloaking effect for the Nightkin. I also wanted to explore the idea that extended Stealth Boy (the technology used for cloaking) use would eventually cause mental instability in the Nightkin after decades of use.

The most obvious enemies we've brought back are Geckos, the giant mutated lizards from Fallout 2. In their basic form, Geckos are small, funny-looking pests that don't pose much challenge for the player. Their larger kin, Golden Geckos and Fire Geckos, are much larger and more dangerous.

Wednesday - September 15, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Meet The Companions

by Dhruin, 22:23

Bethsoft's Matt Grandstaff has written Meet the Companions for the Playstation Blog. The piece lists every companion in Fallout: New Vegas, with a picture and short bio for each. Spoilers, obviously, so no quote.

How’s your social game? Interacting with Factions, whether it’s helping them out, or massacring their forces, affects your adventure in many different ways, especially if you’re dressed in specific attire.

The rest of the Training deals with creating a character that isn’t going to collapse after a Fiend sneezes on you. How all of the Attributes, Skills, and Perks interact with the clothing you wear and the Followers you find are all extremely important (and overwhelming), so a special Character Archetypes section was created. No matter what your play-style – from the social outcast Sniper to a mountain man bred specially for Hardcore Mode – there’s a character for everyone. We even included the best weapons, outfits, Perks, Skills, Implants, and Followers to compliment each Archetype. One Bethesda employee was said to remark “that’s pretty freakin’ sweet.” Speaking of Hardcore Mode; the training continues with advice on thriving in this most inhospitable of climates. Then there’s updated information on Karma, mapping, and other activities before we delve right in to Reputation, and explain exactly how everyone reacts to everyone else, and how you fit in. What is initially confusing political and societal idiosyncrasies is broken down into something understandable; and more importantly, something you can act on during your entire adventure.

Saturday - September 11, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Interview @ Gaming Union

by Dhruin, 22:26

A site called Gaming Union has a pretty good interview with J.E. Sawyer, discussing the improvements to the environment, combat, progression and more:

GU: It strikes me that this is a series with a lot of history to it. So when you make this game you have to think about the people that loved the original games, as well as those who love Bethesda's approach to Fallout 3. How do you juggle those expectations?

JS: One, ignore some people. I mean flat out, there are people that are reasonable and people who are unreasonable. And then there are people that are completely reasonable, but in a small minority.

So for us, really the way that I approached it was - there are two camps of people. There are the big fans of the original games, the characters of the original games and the factions of the original games. And then there are people that are more into the experience they had with Fallout 3.

So with our story we try to have a lot of characters and organisations from the first two games. You are not required to play those games to appreciate them, but I think that the fans really appreciate things life the California Republic is back, characters like Marcus from Fallout 2, even minor organisations like the Gun Runners of the Apocalypse. People appreciate all that stuff.

But people coming to it from Fallout 3, there are no barriers to them getting into it because it's so fundamentally similar to it.

And then in terms of difficulty, we've done things like add a new hardcore mode, which is separate from normal difficulty, and it really does ramp up the challenge for people that want a more hardcore experience.

So hopefully those two major contingents will find that Fallout New Vegas has something for them.

Fallout: New Vegas - Betting on a Caravan

Those that follow Fallout closely would have noticed back in May that the collector's edition of Fallout: New Vegas comes with, amongst other things, a customized deck of cards to play Caravan, a mini-game for gambling found within New Vegas. Well, you don't have to wait until October when New Vegas releases to start playing. The developers have provided us with the complete rule set so you can play on your own with a normal deck of cards and a friend.

Once Fallout: New Vegas launches, you'll be able to play Caravan in the game to win some virtual caps. Bethesda and Obsidian are also planning to launch a Flash version shortly for those that don't like to use real cards.

Fallout: New Vegas - Preview @ Hooked Gamers

Larry Liberty: There isn't necessarily a single Big Threat. For the player that chooses the "good" path, there is at first glance a terrifying presence in the form of Caesar's Legion. But, things aren't quite as black and white as they were in Fallout 3. One man's hero really could be another's villain, and you have all of those options - choosing sides or factions, or just going at it alone.

Fallout: New Vegas - Interview @ IGN AU

Josh Sawyer: Okay, so basically – the Fallout franchise has, in its past, had a lot of goofy humour in it – and people seem really polarized by it. Some people were like, 'Ah – I love it! Put more Monty Python reverences in it!' and some people were like 'I can't stand it—it really irritates me in every way, shape and form.' I generally do not like the pop-culture references.

IGN AU: No kidding. Why not?

Josh Sawyer: I dunno – it just kind of pulls me out of the world. And a lot of times it just seems kind of cheesy and goofy. I mean, I kind of appreciate it in a 'ha ha ha –fine' kind of way, but once it starts to go overboard and the world is full of it, it just starts to irritate me I guess.

In any case, a lot of our designers wanted to put that stuff in there and I'd be saying 'no, no, no, don't do it.' Eventually we thought, you know, there's probably an easy way to do this, which is a perk that basically says 'I wanna see all the goofy shit.' So we have Wild Wasteland. You opt into it at the beginning and then you get to see all the goofy crap.

NMA also points out a correction at the Beth forums - it sounds like the description of the Cowboy perk was slightly mis-transcribed in this article.

Fallout: New Vegas - Preview, Interview @ Planet Fallout

by Dhruin, 10:07

Planet Fallout has a Fallout: New Vegas preview and interview pairing from PAX. An excerpt from their hands-on impressions:

I was first thrown into the middle of the outlying areas of New Vegas near the towns of Goodspring and Primm. As I wandered through the world, the landscape felt a lot less static than the Washington DC wasteland. Flags of the New California Republic were scattered around the main roads leading into town, displaying the territory under the control of one of the prominent factions. As for the graphical quality, though there have been no major improvements to the engine, the distant hills appeared much clearer and sharp than the distant landscapes of Fallout 3. The interior lighting has become more natural looking as well. Sunlight was vividly shining through the windows giving a realistic feel and contrast between areas that were and were not lit. Textures and models appeared just as they did in Fallout 3, with a slight increase in fps while still glancing across the post nuclear wasteland.

You mentioned earlier how interacting with factions will change the story, could you be more specific?

Not without giving too much away, but in general you've got two main factions in the game fighting for control over the Mojave wasteland, NCR and Caesar's Legion. We've tried to have everything in Fallout: New Vegas not to be so black and white. These are the good guys these are the bad guys, if you join with these guys you are bad, if you join with these guys you are good. It's not quite that cut and dry. When you talk to folks, things you are doing may feel a bit more evil or feel more good guy, but you can join either side and help their cause in terms of helping them buy more control of the wasteland. There are a lot of smaller factions in the wasteland that maybe neutral in terms of which way they are leaning. And working through some of those factions and how they act, or the quests that you do for them, or how you resolve things related to those smaller factions as well as those larger faction, you're kind of helping chart the course of what is going to happen in the Mojave and who is going to win.

To put it more simply, if you join Caesar's Legion and spend a lot of time wiping out the NCR then you are helping Caesar's Legion win out over the NCR. While if you join NCR and start wiping out Caesar's Legion then you are helping them take control. So that is a more obvious example of getting involved with factions and helping determine outcome and who is going to the whole.

Saturday - September 04, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Preview@ Digital Spy

We moved the action to Vegas because we wanted a setting that was close to the West Coast, as that is a setting we have become familiar with in the previous games in the series. We also wanted something that was starkly different from Washington DC," he explained. "In the United States, a lot of people think of Washington as the cornerstone of our country, a city of American virtue. Whereas, Las Vegas is a city of American vice, that continually reinvents itself, destroys itself, rebuilds itself. Because it's a city of vice, we thought that contrast was good, and also the visuals are much different to set it apart."

During our hands-on session at gamescom, it was apparent that the development team has strived to create the yin to Fallout 3's yang. While its forbear began with the protagonist's birth, New Vegas opens with our main character being shot in the head and dumped in an unmarked grave. After being pulled from the ground by a robot named Victor, we were nursed back to health by the local physician Doc Mitchell. The good doctor then hit us with series of questions, which serves as the character customisation process.

Fallout: New Vegas - All Roads Preview

Get a sneak peek at Fallout: New Vegas—All Roads, the graphic novel available exclusively in the Fallout: New Vegas collector’s edition from Bethesda Softworks. All Roads introduces the world of New Vegas, a town of dreamers and desperados being torn apart by warring factions vying for complete control of this desert oasis, and a tells an intriguing tale of loyalty and violence that leads right up to the beginning of the game.

Written by Chris Avellone, the game’s Senior Designer, All Roads is tightly integrated into the story of New Vegas, even containing clues to in-game missions for the sharp-eyed reader. Artists Jean Diaz (Incorruptible) and Wellinton Alves (Shadowland: Blood on the Streets, Nova) and cover artist Geof Darrow (Hard Boiled, The Matrix, Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot) stunningly interpret the world of New Vegas.

Saturday - August 28, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Preview @ Xbox360Achievements

It was impossible to see everything in such a short amount of time, but the major addition we did see is a pretty intriguing one. Welcome to Hardcore mode, where your equipment deteriorates faster, Stimpacks and Rad-X only heal over time rather than instantly and ammo now weighs you down. Not to mention the fact you will need to eat, drink and sleep regularly or risk exhaustion. These may seem like small changes but trust me when I say they make a big difference. Now your weapons will break down during combat with alarming regularity, not to mention the fact that if you take too much damage, then you can’t rely on just a Stimpack to get you back on your feet, so you may have to flee or end up face down in the desert. It is also surprising how much you can take for granted the weightlessness of ammo – once it starts to become a burden you really have to pick and choose your equipment with care as you cannot possibly carry it all. Gone are the days of being a one man tank. This mode will truly separate the men from the boys and is the perfect addition to those that blitzed through Fallout 3 and wanted a bit more of a challenge.

AUSGamers also has an interview, this time with Producer Tess Treadwell, who is a new one to me. Here's a snip following on from the comment that Obsidian programmers had to improve the engine's dialogue capabilities:

AG: With the changed dialogue system, when you say "complex” do you mean more choices, or more dynamic?

Tess: I would say both - more choices and more dynamic. The way that their GECK game editor works, I guess it just makes dialogue clunky and hard to manage, and I guess Fallout 3's dialogue didn't get that complicated, but for us there are dialogue strings that just go on and on, and things you say will affect things that happen later on - there's just so much stuff going on that we built our own (dialogue system).

AG: So will there be changing, dynamic reactions from NPCs over time? I always hated going back to Megaton and having the sheriff always say "Are you lookin' for the mayor, or the sheriff?"

Tess: Oh yeah, in ours... well for one they'll respond to your faction reputation, sometimes factions will comment on your reputation with other factions, and also major events. People will comment on not just things you've done, but things that are happening in the world. You know, like, if the NCR loses an outpost or something, people will comment on that, and that might be the way you find out about it. That kind of stuff will happen all the time.

History: During the Cold War, the fear of communism triggered the establishment of the Enclave, one of several ‘off the books’ government agencies designed for the express purpose of preserving American ideological “purity.” These shadow agencies were allowed a very large degree of freedom to enforce their cultural policies, including banning ice cream socials (Because, in the eyes of the Enclave, ‘social’ = ‘socialism’, and socialism = communism: lite).

Tuesday - August 24, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Preview @ RPS

In a sequence that’s already been documented in previews last year, you come to in a doctor’s surgery. The guy’s somehow pieced your shattered skull and splattered brain back together, which also happens to be a pretty smart way of justifying why you then have to define name, face and abilities of an adult character. It’s a lot more straight to the point than Liam Neeson’s endless, awed muttering in Fallout 3′s character creation, and a damn sight more playful too.

The writing and acting seemed a little sharper than F3′s oft-wobbly dialogue, but I’ll admit I may be coloured in my thinking there, already knowing as I do that Planescape god-brain Chris Avellone has had a major hand in New Vegas’ wordsmithery. While my wandering and chatting through the Wild Westy opening town was about as purposeful as a cider-soaked wasp crawling across a lawn, I didn’t run into any jarring “a traveller, eh?” you-are-in-an-rpg clunkers. I felt a little more comfortable, a little more absorbed.

Monday - August 23, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Preview @ The Vault

by Dhruin, 21:41

Long time Fallout and RPG community member Ausir has written a two-part preview of Fallout: New Vegas at The Vault. Despite the limited time with the game, it's worth a read to get a different view on the game. Here's a snip from Part 2:

What I’ve seen so far of the game feels pretty much like a cross between Fallout 2 and Fallout 3, with bits of Van Buren also thrown in, which can be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it. New Vegas itself, with all its casinos, singing, dancing, gangs and Elvises, feels very much like a new New Reno, even if this time it’s grounded more in the 1950s and not in prohibition-era mob and contemporary pop-culture, like in Fallout 2. It might not be that surprising, considering that some of the developers previously worked on Fallout 2, but it will disappoint some that hoped for a return to the more gritty feel of Fallout 1 (although there will likely still be a fair portion of that in the game, just like there was in Fallout 2). The NCR-Caesar’s Legion-House triangle also reminds me of the relations between NCR, Vault City and New Reno, which was probably the best side-story in Fallout 2. In general, the writing seemed as good as in Fallout 2 for the most part.

Fallout: New Vegas - Definitive Ending Explained

1Up speaks to Josh Sawyer about Fallout: New Vegas having a fixed ending - like the original Fallout 3 design before the addition of the Broken Steel DLC. Here's part of Josh's response:

"We put a lot of effort into the ending slides -- we know those slides are really popular with people so we want to make sure there's a huge amount of variety and reactivity with that stuff. We weren't really focused on new features so much as to add a really rich sense of reactivity to the players and the choices they make."

We want to make it a definitive ending. Initially, we talked about trying to support post-game play, but because the changes that can happen at the end of the game are pretty major, this is what it basically came down to: either have the changes feel really major in the end slides and then have them not be very major after the end of the game, or make them really minor and not that impactful. And we feel it's better to say, 'you know what, we're just going to end the game, and the changes you made can be minor or really really big, but because we can't script all the changes to the Wasteland to let you keep playing, we're just going to stop it there.' But we do let the player know when that's about to happen-- a sort of, 'the end of the game is coming, so we're saving your game right now, so if you want to keep your game going, you can, otherwise, it's about to be over.'"

Fallout: New Vegas - GamesCom Previews, Interview

“Basically unless you’re right on top of a person you’re not going to see a 95% chance to hit across the board,” elaborates Sawyer. “I wanted to make it more like a tactical choice – if you go for a headshot success is not guaranteed… VATS should be approached as a power-up, like bullet-time, as something that supplements real-time as a special resource. This is how we approach it with Vegas.”

...and on scaling and exploration:

“The world should feel a little bit more like a dangerous place. You can’t just go wherever you want,” says Sawyer. “I was a really fan of Fallout 1 and 2 and I do believe that exploration is a big part of the series, including 3. What I want is for people to feel like they have to be a little careful… it makes the player feel like they’re actively engaging the world, and if they take on difficult things they feel rewarded for it.”

Even without Hardcore mode turned on – a super-realistic mode that requires your character to stay hydrated and pay particular attention to radiation poisoning – the game doesn’t automatically scale to your character in the way that Fallout 3 did, at least not off the quest paths. “Once you get off the beaten path you can get into a lot of trouble. If you ignore everyone saying that a place is dangerous, and ignore the signs saying keep out, very dangerous, then you’re going to die,” Sawyer asserts.

Desctructoid has a stand-up video interview with Josh Sawyer and an annoying interviewer. Josh again reiterates the game can be completed without killing anyone.

Wednesday - August 18, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Preview Roundup

Then there are traits, innate abilities that give you a bonus in one area and penalise you in another. If you’re a bit of a pacifist and want to boost your sciences, speechcraft and medicine, for example, you can take a hit to your Guns skill by opting for the ‘Good Natured’ trait. Our eye was drawn to the ‘Wild Wasteland’ option, which exaggerates all the wild and silly elements of a radioactive wasteland and should provide some interesting and challenging encounters in combination with New Vegas’s Hardcore mode.

I didn't do any of that last bit. I don't play Fallout like that. But you can - that certainly hasn't changed. Although now there are further reaching consequences for every action you perform in the game, and resonance of them to you is much more jarring (at least from my experience and perspective). Towns and settlements now have an indicator on your map as to how they feel about you, whether you're liked, disliked or if they're simply filthy neutrals, and you can layer this throughout your journey which means it can become quite complex - especially when you have missions that move from one town to the next where you're accepted in one place, and shot on-sight in another.

Friday - August 13, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - QuakeCon Preview Roundup

by Dhruin, 23:28

QuakeCon has seen Bethsoft and Obsidian giving sites an hour or thereabouts to play with Fallout: New Vegas, resulting in a bunch of new previews. Most of the articles are walkthroughs of their limited time, so there's a sameness to most of them.

I killed most of the members I could find of each of these factions, save for the Kings. They were a bit too powerful for my meager firepower. At first, I was just killing for the fun of it. Obsidian stacked my character with ammunition and weapons (though my stats were too low level to use most of them effectively). Boxing gloves were my personal favorite tool of slaughter, backed in a close second by the machete. Running around in a pinstripe suit with a cowboy hat and boxing gloves is just plain funny.

After a bit of killing, though, I realized I had a problem on my hands. To get to the Strip, you have to make your way past a series of Securitron Gatekeeper bots. Like I said before, they won't let just anybody in. You need 2000 caps, a passport, or a high enough science skill level to convince them to let you through. I had none of these, so I went back to the killing in search of caps.

I couldn't tell you specifically why, but VATS feels better -- it feels smoother and easier to use. In the first title, I often found myself just playing in real-time, but in New Vegas, I much more instinctively pulled up the VATS system, both for the great camera views and to help me set up my shots. I used the new VATS against a faction called the "Powder Gangers," chucking dynamite and decapitating them with laser pistols in slow motion.

New Vegas is still Fallout -- it plays the same as the first title, and while the animations and models are new, it's got the same retro wasteland aesthetic. If you loved Fallout 3, you'll probably like this one, and if you hated Fallout 3, New Vegas probably won't change your mind. But the subtitled sequel does seem to improve on Bethesda's formula in a few significant ways. In the first hour and a half or so, it's cleaner, faster, and smoother than the first go-round. And that may make visiting the Wild West Wasteland an even better experience than exploring the Capital.

Gameplay wise, New Vegas is like slipping on your favorite pair of Post-Nuclear slippers. It plays like Fallout 3, right down to the V.A.T.S system that I relied on way too much. But it feels smoother. The color pallette and scenery, however, is subtely different from Fallout 3's as well. It's obvious a lot of time and effort went into the look of the game, so it feels familliar, but different enough to not seem like an add-on or some DLC. The Western states haven't been as obliterated as DC in Fallout 3. They largely avoided full nuclear strikes, so there's less rubble and more people, but that brings the problems that come with society -- specifically, lots of different factions.

A producer who is working on the game with development studio Obsidian Entertainment told me I would be free very early in this game. As soon as I stepped outside of the game's few-minute profiling section I could go anywhere I wanted across the New Vegas landscape. This Fallout sequel is less linear than its predecessor, the developer told me. We gamers are expected to wander it and can pursue one of four main paths, allying ourselves with the factions of the game's violent Vegas-area West. We can take the path of the California Republic or of Caesar's Legion or one that has us side with the people of the vibrant New Vegas either with or without its leader, the charismatic Mr. House. There are about 2200 speaking characters to encounter in this game, the producer said, and all but one of them can be killed — and will stay dead — if you choose to be such a brute.

Although it's apparently possible to start right at the beginning of the game and run off into the sunset, our hands-on puts us in the closeted hamlet of Freeside, where gangland twins the Garrets run a seedy back-street casino called the Atomic Wrangler and local security firm the Kings shakes down passers-by while ensuring "the peace". Like much of New Vegas, it's a place where the good make do and the bad make themselves rich in the meantime.

I continued to wander the streets looking for my targets, and in doing so became distracted by the gated entrance to the main Strip. Figuring I could find a way past this gate to explore the Strip, I approached it and noticed several Securitrons (the robots that were digging up the grave in the New Vegas teaser trailer). Nearby was a man named Old Ben; he kindly warned me that I would need to either have 2,000 caps or a passport to pass through the gates to the Strip. Nonsense. I'll just shoot my way through past the robots, looting their body for a key in the process. That was the plan, anyway, and was encouraged to do so because apparently someone tried the exact same thing earlier in the day.

It was just then that our time with New Vegas ran out, so we reluctantly relinquished the controller. While we didn't get to experience much of the game in the time we were given, we were able to get a sense of the open-endedness and degree of choice you'll have in the game. Just like in Fallout 3, you can seemingly resort to violence just about whenever you want, though in many cases, this can have deadly repercussions--using words instead of bullets can get you what you want without a lot of pain, especially if you have sufficient ability scores or skill points. New Vegas will be released this October.

Some new screens were released - which you'll see in the previews - but NMA has the four.

Thursday - August 12, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Dev Profile @ Bethblog

I’m the Lead Programmer for Fallout: New Vegas. That means that I work with the programming team to design the technical implementation of the game. That can mean that I sit down with Josh and a programmer and make sure that what he sets out to code will meet what is requested by the design team. I also provide technical assistance to the team when they need it. It’s a more social job than most people might think but I get plenty of time to sit down and code my own features.

Fallout: New Vegas - Behind The Voices

Matt first got on our radar because he went on talk shows — the first being Ellen — and one of his anecdotes was that he played so much Fallout 3 that he had to get surgery on his wrist. In fact, he even gave an Xbox 360 and a copy of Fallout 3 to Ellen, I believe. So we contacted him to see if he would be interested, as we had a role that we thought would be a really good fit for him.

After reaching out we had a meeting with Matt where it was me, him, a couple people from Obsidian, and people from the talent agency. The conversation basically just descended into nerdiness. He just wanted talk about Fallout 3, and gaming in general. That guy is not faking it – he is really that into Fallout 3 and games in general. It was cool; you can tell when someone is genuinely enthusiastic.

Voice-wise and attitude-wise, think of Benny as the lost Rat Pack character. He’s the head of the Chairmen, who run the Tops casino. His character has his own agenda. Matthew Perry really dove head-first into his role, and that was not easy; there’s some Rat Pack slang in there.

"The Fallout franchise has taken narratives in interactive entertainment to the next level, and we could not be more excited about the all-new celebrity lineup for Fallout: New Vegas," said Pete Hines, Vice President of PR and Marketing for Bethesda Softworks. "The voice acting provided by these actors helps drive the compelling and immersive story of Fallout and further adds to the overall gameplay experience."

Ron Perlman returns to voice the narrator in Fallout: New Vegas, a role he has played in every major Fallout game to date. Matthew Perry plays Benny, a smooth-talking, two faced gangster, and Wayne Newton takes on the role as "Mr. New Vegas," the radio DJ of the Mojave Wasteland.

Three celebrities take on roles as playable companions in Fallout: New Vegas: Danny Trejo is Raul the Ghoul, a mechanic and former gunslinger; Zach Levi is Arcade, a member of the Followers of the Apocalypse who hides a mysterious past, and Felicia Day is Veronica, a sarcastic Brotherhood of Steel scribe.

The epic cast continues with Kris Kristofferson as Chief Hanlon, a grizzled solider at the end of his career, and Rene Auberjonois as the enigmatic and reclusive Mr. House. Michael Dorn reprises his role as Marcus, an intelligent super mutant, who was last seen in 1998's Fallout® 2; John Doman is Caesar, the charismatic and powerful dictator at the head of Caesar's Legion. William Sadler plays Victor, a friendly robot with the personality of an old fashioned cowboy.

In addition to this star-studded cast, players can expect to hear even more celebrity cameos throughout the world of Fallout: New Vegas.

Fallout: New Vegas, the follow-up to Fallout 3 - the 2008 Game of the Year - brings this beloved franchise to a location only Fallout could do justice: Vegas. Fallout: New Vegas takes all the action, humor and post-apocalyptic grime and grit of this legendary series, and raises the stakes. Published by Bethesda Softworks, Fallout: New Vegas is currently under development at Obsidian Entertainment. Fallout: New Vegas will be available in North America on October 19, 2010 for Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system, and Games for Windows and in Europe on October 22, 2010.

Fallout: New Vegas - Preview @ Square-Go

It is not all about the strip as the surrounding Mojave Dessert has plenty of life in it, with mutant rats, jury-rigged robots, settlers, heavily armed mutants and numerous factions like the new Californian Republic or Caesars Legion dotted all over the wasteland trying to make a living.

Monday - August 09, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Jason Fader Interview @ Hexus

What's your job at Obsidian? I'm the technical producer on Fallout: New Vegas. It's kind of an odd hybrid role, combining production work, programming, and random duties that need to get done. For example, towards the beginning of the project, I managed all of the programmers, character/concept/UI artists, animators, writers, and audio engineers. As the project progressed, I took on other duties like managing the build process, writing tools for the team, and recording temp voice over. Occasionally I'll dip into the engine and fix a few bugs, and then jump over to a production task like scheduling. I love the variety of my job.

Fallout: New Vegas - Preview @ Dedicated to Gamers

One major addition to the Fallout 3 template comes in the form of New Vegas' “Hardcore Mode” which can be toggled on and off from the menus at any time by the player and will deliver a more intense and sense of realism than the standard mode of play. Only the brave will survive, since Hardcore Mode tasks players to keep hydrated and remain free from starvation in the perilous desert plains, with ammunition also having weight, healing having a more delayed effect, and crippled limbs only available to be healed if your the medicine skill is of a high enough level or medical equipment is available to you.

Thursday - August 05, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Preorders Outstripping FO3

“Fallout: New Vegas pre-orders are far outstripping those of Fallout 3,” Bethesda’s European marketing and PR director Sarah Seaby told MCV. “Based on the feedback from gamers, we anticipate fans will enjoy returning to the Fallout universe, where they will experience a new story in an exciting New Vegas setting.”

Wednesday - August 04, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Dev Profile @ Bethblog

I’m the technical producer on Fallout: New Vegas. It’s kind of an odd hybrid role, combining production work, programming, and random duties that need to get done. For example, towards the beginning of the project, I managed all of the programmers, character/concept/UI artists, animators, writers, and audio engineers. As the project progressed, I took on other duties like managing the build process, writing tools for the team, and recording temp voice over. Occasionally I’ll dip into the engine and fix a few bugs, and then jump over to a production task like scheduling. I love the variety of my job.

Monday - August 02, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Interview @ Gamasutra

In my demonstration of Fallout: New Vegas, it looks like you took a lot more influence from 1950s sci-fi, which I associate with the older Fallout games. The gecko lizard monster and Rusty the Robot looks very vintage, more so than Fallout 3, I would say. Were you really trying to home in on that?

FU: Exactly. Whenever I used to sell Fallout in the years of bygone, the idea was that it had sustained the 1950s for a hundred years. That's how we always looked at it. What Bethesda did is still the '50s; it's still that vibe, but I think actually where you see the difference is that we're doing it with Las Vegas. Vegas is supposed to be more... I don't want to say "campy", but it's supposed to be more "surface". You've just got to keep pushing it.

Friday - July 30, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - At QuakeCon

by Dhruin, 21:21

Bethsoft has launched a new newsletter and the focus of this month is QuakeCon. If you make it to Dallas for August 12-15, you'll get to hear a panel with Richard Garriott (twice in two newsbits!) and go hands-on with Fallout: New Vegas.

When you go hands on with Fallout: New Vegas, you'll start in Freeside, an area just off the strip. From there, you'll have 20 minutes to explore wherever you like within the Mojave Wasteland or check out nearby locales like the Atomic Wrangler Casino or tangle with a faction aptly known as The Kings. Don't worry... we'll provide plenty of Stimpacks and weapons so you can survive.

Wednesday - July 28, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Dev Profile @ Bethblog

I am a World Builder, basically my job is to decorate the New Vegas wasteland. This includes both interiors and exteriors, everything from rocks and trees to that bottle of Nuka Cola you see sitting on the table. I try to set up cool looking areas for players to explore, and set up props that tell a story about what happened in that area. Occasionally I’ll get to add lighting to help emphasize what the area’s all about.

Sunday - July 25, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Comic-Con Panel Coverage

by Dhruin, 22:22

Both G4 and Kotaku have coverage of the Comic-Con panel Fallout: Writing for Evolved Game Franchises, featuring Chris Avellone, John Gonzalez and George Ziets talking about the creative process for Fallout: New Vegas. Here's a snip from Kotaku:

The Fallout: New Vegas creative lead said the books that he drew inspiration from included Las Vegas: An Unconventional History and Cormac McCarthy's The Road. The "non-Brad Pitt, de-Clooneyfied Ocean's Eleven" and indie flick Six String Samurai were his noteworthy film influences. Gangster Bugsy Siegel, the Rat Pack and eccentric millionaire Howard Hughes were also influential. Gonzalez said to pay attention to characters throughout the game to see if you can spot their New Vegas counterparts and the influence of the "Giltter Gulch old style Vegas."

Gonzalez said he immersed himself in the first three Fallout games, replaying each and going on a 14-hour-long writing bender at a local coffee shop "vomiting forth the first draft of the Fallout: New Vegas story treatment."

Wednesday - July 21, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Graphic Novel Preview

by Dhruin, 22:30

IGN has a preview of All Roads, the Chris Avellone graphic novel included in the Fallout: New Vegas Collector's Edition.

Avellone described the project to us, saying "'All Roads' showcases all the events that take place a week before Fallout: New Vegas begins through the perspectives of two characters hunting the player. We've structured this from a narrative standpoint and also from an artistic standpoint by having each perspective illustrated by a different artist (Wellinton Alves, Jean Diaz) and by using different color schemes.

Monday - July 19, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Preview @ Planet Fallout

If you enjoyed the art direction of Fallout 3, you’re going to find a similar but different approach taken to the desert atmosphere. From my limited experience, it wasn’t as dreary and depressing at all times but there were certainly moments where it felt that way; it just wasn’t as pervasive.

Don’t think for a moment that Obsidian got off easy and was able to port over a lot of the Fallout 3 rendered objects either. The developer standing next to me remarked that one of the few things that actually were able to be directly drawn from Fallout 3 was some of the roadways. Other than that, everything was either manipulated from stock versions or created from scratch.

Sunday - July 18, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Preview @ Play.tm

Fallout: New Vegas is a completely fresh narrative, with a new cast of characters and a brand new setting with blue skies, thanks to the bombs causing less of an impact than they did in Fallout 3's ravaged and destroyed DC. And although New Vegas adopts the very same engine and assets as Fallout 3 - and it certainly looks very much like a spin-off rather than a fully-fledged sequel - this demonstrates that Obsidian is either staying true to the spirit of Bethesda's take on the series or playing it safe.

Friday - July 16, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Graphic Novel Sneak Peek

Today we’re announcing that comic icon Geof Darrow — best known for contributing art to Hard Boiled, Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot and The Matrix films — has put his considerable talents to work on a cover for “All Roads,” with Peter Doherty providing colors. The graphic novel also features art by Jean Diaz (Incorruptible) and Wellinton Alves (Marvel’s Shadowland: Blood on the Streets, Nova).

If I don’t pre-order a certain pack, what items will I not be able to get later in my gameplay experience?

If you look at the pre-order digital pack images below, you’ll see that there are items designated as a *Pre-Order Exclusive – these items will only be available with that specific pre-order digital pack. As for the items listed at the bottom of each image (Also Includes*), these items will be available to you as an added benefit at the beginning of your quest in Fallout: New Vegas, but they will also found within the Mojave Wasteland during your gameplay experience.

Fallout: New Vegas - Voice Recording Finished @ DaC

Friday - July 09, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Preview @ GameBanshee

by Dhruin, 23:06

GameBanshee has an excellent preview of Fallout: New Vegas from E3 - probably the best I've read. They explain certain topics were off limits so they can't bring any revolutionary news but it's detailed and well-written. Here's a sample:

Other points of interest along "The Strip" include the Lucky 38 (a towering casino and home to the mysterious Securitron robot-controlling "Mr. House"), the Vault 21 hotel and casino (a typical Vault-Tec shelter turned into what Chris calls "a tourist attraction"), Gomorrah (another casino that was off in the distance), and the Ultra-Luxe (a fancy-looking restaurant with strippers dancing provocatively in its front fountain), though I didn't have a chance to enter any of these locations during my time with the E3 build. From The Tops, I was teleported to an area in the Mojave Desert just outside of a Caesar's Legion camp. Here, I recruited a New California Republic sniper named Boone (there are a total of nine such companions, by the way), who asked for my help in infiltrating the camp and killing the slaving faction's leader. I could go about the task in a multitude of different ways, but given the amount of time I had during the demo, direct combat seemed most appropriate.

At this point, I had a quick look at Obsidian's new "Companion Commands" control wheel. From this interface, you can now order a companion to take an aggressive or passive stance, use ranged or melee weapons, show you their inventory, keep their distance from your position, back up (if you need them to reposition themselves), indulge you in dialogue, wait where they're at until you give them further orders, or heal up with a stimpak. After making sure Boone was well-equipped, I had a look at my own inventory (the interface of which is nearly identical to Fallout 3). Some of the new weapons at my disposal were an Anti-Material Rifle, a Lever-Action Shotgun, some C-4 Plastic Explosives with Detonator, a 9 Iron golf club, a Bladed Gauntlet, a Multiplas Rifle, a Plasma Caster, a Trail Carbine, a Light Machine Gun, and the infamous Grenade Launcher. Chris also tells me that "named" weapons will be making a return in New Vegas, though they won't accept modifications like standard weapons will. Additionally, when you highlight each weapon, you're not only shown their damage and quality scores, but you're also provided with a rating for the weapon's damage per second (DPS). This made it an easy decision for me to equip the Plasma Caster for maximum carnage.

Saturday - July 03, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Kamikaze Trait

So far Obsidian has confirmed two traits: an updated version of the old Small Frame trait, which gives an agility bonus but makes you more prone to broken limbs; and a new one called Four Eyes, which gives your character a bonus to perception while wearing glasses and a penalty when not wearing them. Because I asked real nice, they’ve now revealed a third: Kamikaze. It’s a trait familiar to those of us who played the first games, and like the Kamikaze trait in Fallout 1 and 2, it suits players with an aggressive fighting style—you get 10 extra action points, but your Damage Threshold is reduced by two.

Prospects are looking good for New Vegas. As it uses the same engine as Fallout 3, not too much has changed, though a few changes have been added, such as the ability to aim down the iron sights on many guns. Another addition is the Reputation system, which functions similar to Karma in FO3, although the Karma system will return, it won't affect relations with NPCs, that job is left to Reputation.

Tuesday - June 29, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Video Interview, Preview

by Dhruin, 23:43

Here's a pair of Fallout: New Vegas articles spotted by Omega. GameSpot AU has a video interview with Chris Avellone. Over the almost five minutes, Chris shows the Vegas strip and discusses some of the design pillars - such as being able to solve every quest as a combat character, speech guy or thief. He confirms "you'll be able to go through the entire game without killing anybody", "talk your way through the game, stealth your way through the game or murder your way through the game".

Sunday - June 27, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Preview @ PALGN

However, there are some bigger additions to the gameplay of Fallout 3 such as the new power struggle between three factions in the game. The New California Republic (NCR), New Vegas and Caeser's Legion are all factions who are at war with each other over control of the city, and your actions on missions will actively affect which sides trust you or dislike you. It basically boils down to completing tasks for one side will obviously endear you to them, while carrying out missions against other factions will make you an enemy and a target in their eyes.

Thursday - June 24, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Preview @ Eurogamer

So then: enhanced weapons, more useful companions, a new factions system, cheerier visuals... In short, New Vegas looks set to be more of an evolution of the Fallout series than a revolution. Not that fans of the previous game will be complaining, of course, and not to discount these changes and new features. Judging by what we've seen so far, they've been conscientiously thought through, and sit comfortably within the framework which made Fallout 3 such a success. This may not be Fallout as you've never seen it before, but it's certainly Vegas as you've never seen it, and exploring this world looks like being an awful lot of fun.

Wednesday - June 23, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Preview @ CVG

Once into the central control room you have a number of options that will either cement your relationship with the NCR, or damage it. We go for damage. Big damage. Our man reroutes the power to an orbital laser, which he then uses to incinerate the NCR troops stationed outside the power plant. It's spectacular as the giant beam sweeps over the baked floor, evaporating the opposition. Later on in the game, we're told, that orbital laser can become part of your arsenal as you develop a portable control device for it. Like the Hammer of Dawn from Gears of War, only far more powerful.

Attacks on specific factions will have much more subtle, believable consequences. In fact, everything you do will matter more thanks to a combined reputation and morality system. Our little atrocity will probably evoke retribution from the NCR, but because it was a significant attack on their rivals, Caesar's Legion might sit up and take notice. Morality is more than just good and evil here. There are many grey areas and because morality is tied into your reputation, it's possible to be hated in some parts of the world and revered in others. Even seemingly 'goody-goody' choices will have bad consequences for some.

Tuesday - June 22, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - E3 Preview at Gamer Limit

Simply put, New Vegas was a disappointment for me, and because Vegas was once a place I called “home,” itwas the title I was looking forward to most. While it may sound contradictory, or even slightly biased, my impressions of the demonstration are completely separate from how I feel the overall game will be upon release and with good reason too.

Getting right down to the heart of the presentation, Fallout: New Vegas was presented terribly at E3 this year. This was Bethesda’s moment to blow Obsidian skeptics out of their seats, and a chance to show the public that the publisher is granting Obsidian full support. Instead, they really failed to follow through and only placed a bit more doubt on how the end product will turn out.

Saturday - June 19, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - E3 Preview @ Atomic Gamer

by Magerette, 17:13

Atomic Gamer is the latest to post a preview on their E3 experience with Obsidian and Bethesda's upcoming Fallout entry, Fallout:New Vegas. Here's a sample:

...Obsidian has taken some beatings for their past releases, sometimes from gamers and sometimes from the press, but even after being disappointed in the disjointed experience they delivered in Alpha Protocol with Sega, I still maintain that Obsidian has the talent and the ability to deliver games on the quality people continue to expect out of them - they just need to find the right leadership roles for their teams and the right publisher to allow them to do what they want on their own timetable.

And after playing Fallout: New Vegas, I think this is finally starting to happen. Sure, it closely follows the formula set up by Bethesda two years ago, but it also gives us an entirely new landmass to explore along with many interesting, new characters and a full game's worth of new quests and objectives. They've also added a faction system that lets you become an exalted hero or hated enemy of several groups vying for control of New Vegas. Throw in specialized melee attacks for use in the semi-tactical VATS mode along with important tweaks to how you use your character's skills both in and out of combat, and I think we're seeing just enough evolution in the Fallout 3 formula without trying to reinvent everything.

Fallout: New Vegas - Preview @ Joystiq

For a lot of people, that won't be a bad thing -- New Vegas doesn't break what's not broken, and the few things it does change are definitely improvements. VATS is updated a little bit to make activating it smoother, and add a few cinematic views to the gory proceedings (a new "kill cam" mode shows you some big kills even during first-person action). Companions now have their own rotary menu with eight different commands, so you don't have to talk to them every time you need them to do something. Books have been changed into magazines, weapons react a little better, and we've heard that guns can be modified (though I didn't get to see that during the demo).

Tuesday - June 15, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - E3 Preview @ IGN

Melee combat never looked that hot in Fallout 3 unless you used the unappealing third-person view. Fortunately, Obsidian has fixed the camera so that playing in third-person isn't just possible, it's preferable. The camera is now tight on the hip of the character instead of showing their poorly animated legs. This is a more traditional camera for a third-person action game and it makes a big difference in terms of playability. Obsidian is throwing in tons of wild and crazy looks and outfits that you will want to see in the third-person view.

In Fallout 3, it was easy to max out most, if not all, of your skills. Is anything being done to prevent this?From Ryan via Facebook

JS: We have done several things to adjust the skill point economy. First and foremost, the formula for calculating skill points per level has changed. We are still experimenting with what formula to use, but a 10 IN will likely not boost a character's skills as much as it did in F3.

Most of the skill boosting perks have been removed, which means that method of advancing skills no longer exists. Skill books now give +3 skill points, +4 with Comprehension, but there are far fewer skill books in the world. This both reduces how much of a boost skill books will give overall and reduces the impact of Comprehension on that value (don't worry, Comprehension also gives a bonus to skill magazines, so it has more broad applicability). Our "Bobblehead equivalent" does not give SPECIAL or skill bonuses, so those are also removed from the skill point economy.

Thursday - June 10, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Digital Preorder Packs

by Dhruin, 21:05

Bethsoft sent us news of Fallout: New Vegas "Digital Pre-Sell Packs". For those buying from Steam, you can also grab deals on Bethsoft's previous games, ranging from Morrowind: GotY for $5, though to the works (Morrowind, Oblivion, FO3, F: NV) for $88.48.

The PR from Bethsoft:

We’re pleased to announce Fallout: New Vegas digital pre-order packs are now available in North America through participating retailers and will be available worldwide soon. The Classic, Tribal, Caravan, and Mercenary packs each contain in-game items offered exclusively through GameStop, Amazon, Steam, Walmart and Best Buy.

The Classic Pack, available when you pre-order through GameStop, contains:

·Armored Vault 13 Suit - Extensively patched up and dotted with piecemeal armor, this outfit is an homage to the classic ending of the original Fallout.

·Vault 13 Canteen - This handy device is useful for staving off dehydration and providing a small amount of healing in the Mojave Wasteland.

Wednesday - June 09, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Inside the Vault

Can you give us a broad sense of what goes into the design of a New Vegas sound effect? How much original recording have you done?

We have done a ton of original recording for New Vegas. Some sounds end up being relatively easy to replicate. For example, the sounds of boxes and bottles bouncing on the ground are somewhat simple. We just search for an object that sounds like we want and throw it around in our recording studio for a while. Those recordings get edited into usable sound effects and pretty much go straight into the game.

On the other hand, some sounds are significantly more complex to recreate. Even something as simple as a footstep can be quite a process. We really wanted the footsteps on wood to have a very particular quality to them. They needed to be solid and strong, yet gritty and decayed at the same time. In order to achieve this we went to some pretty ridiculous lengths. We have brought in multiple types of wood and boards into the studio but it still felt like something was missing.

The final sound effect is actually a mix of a number of different wood footsteps. One is from a broken down wooden trailer from trip we all took to Paramount Ranch, an old movie set were they used to film westerns. Another layer of the sound comes from a ghost town called Panamint City on the edge of Death Valley National Park. After a six mile climb up waterfalls and rocky paths we came to the city and found a number of old cabins with decaying wood floors that had the perfect sound quality that we were looking for.

It may seem like a lot of work for a footstep but it all pays off when it is for a sound you hear thousands and thousands of times as you play the game.

I’m assuming that you are reusing some of the animations from Fallout 3. Have you done anything to improve these or are they going to stay the same way that they did in Fallout 3?From Zearox via Bethesda Blog

Josh Sawyer: We started our animation work by determining what new animations we needed, what existing animations we thought needed revision, and what else we could revise. We have already changed some of the core combat animations (for example, all first-person firearm aim animations have been revised) as well as creature animations (our "West Coast" Super Mutants have new idles, walk, and run cycles).

Now when it comes to making Fallout games, I've always found it easy to work on them. I guess my twisted view of the post-apocalyptic world just fits with what Fallout became during the original development of Fallout 1. But, what wasn't easy was actually getting Fallout 1 finished, since we were still figuring out how to make big RPGs back in the mid 1990's. To help, I ended up polishing up one of the larger areas of the game, the Hub, and also finished up a couple of the later areas - the Boneyard and Adytum. I made some good decisions and some bad ones. My addition of a quest in the Hub to get a special gun turned out to be a fun quest that people liked, while my addition of the Turbo Plasma Rifle unbalanced the game. It was near the end of the game, but it's still one of those things where I look back and go "Feargus.....".

All of this really taught me a lot about designing areas and how we need to think about making games like Fallout. In fact, I took away ideas and methods we still use to this day. I do have to give an immense amount of credit to the design team on Fallout 1, in particular Scott Campbell, Jason Taylor, Chris Taylor, and Tim Cain. A lot of their original thoughts and ideas are what really made Fallout what it ended up being.

Wednesday - June 02, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Preview @ ResumePlay

As you go about your business in New Vegas you come across a variety of factions that claim ownership to a specific territory. You will quickly come to know factions like the New California Republic, The Brotherhood of Steel, and Caesar’s Legion. Reputation returns in this title after its absence in Fallout 3. Your availability of dialogue options are based on your reputation, karma and skill. So, this time around your skill has a substantial effect on your conversation choices. Your success in conversation depends on it, and isn’t based on sheer chance like you saw in Fallout 3. Depending on whom you kill or befriend and what side you take the notoriety system will take note and some people will want you dead while others will seek to aid and pay tribute to you.

In 1997, I played the original Fallout. Like the games that followed it, Fallout had Small Guns, Big Guns, and Energy Weapons. In F1, the gun skills were designed for phased obsolescence. If you tagged Big Guns or Energy Weapons early on, you would not be able to gain much, if any, benefit from it for a long time. Even back then, I thought this was problematic. Before playing the game, players could not know how content would limit the applicability of weapons. Ultimately, it came down to three weapons: the minigun, rocket launcher, and flamer. Large, with heavy ammo, and either burst or AoE only. In Fallout 3, the list of Big Guns was expanded to include the fat man, rock-it launcher, and gatling laser. In most situations, these weapons were all still at least mid-power at their weakest. In talking to people in person and online, and in reading online commentary, I found that people were also still unclear on what marked the clear division between Small Guns and Big Guns (and even Energy Weapons, in the case of the Gatling Laser). Certainly the UI could be improved to help with this (something we have already done for F:NV), but it conceptually was a sticking point.

Fallout: New Vegas - Collector's Edition Announced

Bethsoft sent over this PR, announcing a North American Collectors Edition for Fallout: New Vegas, that includes a graphic novel by Chris Avellone titled All Roads.

Fallout: New Vegas Collector's Edition to be Available Worldwide

May 11, 2010 (Rockville, MD) – Bethesda Softworks£, a ZeniMax Media company, today announced the Fallout£: New Vegas collector's edition (CE) for Xbox 360video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStation 3 computer entertainment system, and Games for Windows. The limited collector's edition is available in North America for pre-order now through participating retailers.

In addition to including the highly anticipated game, this premium version of Fallout: New Vegas also includes the game-inspired items below:

∞ ﹒Lucky 7 poker chips. Each of the seven poker chips was designed to represent chips from the major casinos found on the New Vegas strip and throughout the Mojave Wasteland.

∞ A fully customized Fallout: New Vegas deck of cards. Each card in the pack has been uniquely illustrated to depict characters and factions found within the game. Use the cards to play poker, blackjack or Caravan, an original card game that was created by Obsidian especially for New Vegas!

∞ A recreation of the games highly coveted Lucky 38 platinum chip.

∞ A hardcover graphic novel All Roads, that tells the story of some of the characters and events that lead up to Fallout: New Vegas. All Roads waswritten by Chris Avellone, the game's creative director, and created in conjunction with Dark Horse Comics.

∞ The Making of Fallout: New Vegas﹑ DVD. This documentary DVD will contain exclusive video content, including interviews with the developers in which they take you from concept to creation and discuss topics such as story, setting, legacy of the Fallout franchise and more.

"We're offering this very cool collector's edition to give fans the opportunity to own some of the items that they'll discover while playing Fallout: New Vegas," said Pete Hines, vice president of PR and marketing. "We are also expanding their experience with the game by including a top-notch graphic novel worthy of the Fallout name and a DVD that gives them a behind-the-scenes look at how the game was created."

Fallout: New Vegas, the follow-up to Fallout 3 – the 2008 Game of the Year – brings this beloved franchise to a location only Fallout could do justice: Vegas. Fallout: New Vegas takes all the action, humor and post-apocalyptic grime and grit of this legendary series, and raises the stakes. Published by Bethesda Softworks, Fallout: New Vegas is currently under development at Obsidian Entertainment and is slated for a Fall 2010 release.

Josh Sawyer: Caesar's Legion, at least initially when you learn things about them, they're really nasty and bad. But they're not an evil faceless organization, just as NCR is not always the good guys. They do terrible crap all the time, and Caesar's Legion occasionally does some good things. We didn't want to make the player, when they go into it, just go "Welp, I guess these are the bad guys. I'm gonna kill them, and help these guys because they're good."

There's a lot about sort-of political ideologies and who you want to help. Sometimes you call NCR and [they'll] screw over some people who are totally innocent. Sometimes you'll help Caesar's Legion, and it actually helps those guys out.

Feargus Urquhart: For each of those groups, like Caesar's Legion and NCR, we came up with very specific [details of] what they're all about. NCR is very bureaucratic. For each of the groups that we have in the game, we make sure that they have this thing about them. Caesar's Legion, what they're going on is basically slavery and trying to take over the world. NCR wants the government to come back, and has become needlessly bureaucratic. By doing that, we make sure that every time you come against one of these groups, you definitely get a sense of that personality.

Wednesday - May 05, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Interview Mini Roundup

"One of the things we're focusing on with 'New Vegas,' is that this is a post-post-apocalyptic society. Governments have formed and have congress. There are large slaver armies and big merchant caravans."

The differences between the two worlds aren't just a matter of increased infrastructure, though. Sawyer described the world as "much more political." "'Fallout 3' presented the Enclave as very very bad, and the Brotherhood of Steel as very good in opposition to the Enclave," he explained. "In 'New Vegas' we're presenting the landscape a bit differently. You might think the [New California Republic] is purely good, but they're not purely good. And you may think Caesar's Legion is purely bad, but they're not purely bad."

You know, New Vegas is a story we came up. It's all our own characters. It's a bunch of new weapons. It's a whole new part of the world. I mean, it has "Fallout" on it, and we are very faithful to the canon and what's come before, but we can do whatever we want. So, I mean, at that point, it's almost like it's an original.

What would you say is your personal favorite game of all time? I have three all-time favorites: the original Pool of Radiance, Darklands, and the original Fallout. All have their own flaws and idiosyncrasies, but those are the three that have drawn me in more than any others. They’re also the ones that I can go back to without feeling like they’ve aged badly.

Fallout: New Vegas - Preview Flood #2

Of course, it's not all sprawling deserts and blowing tumbleweeds, as the title also does a fantastic job of capturing the look and feel of its setting with plenty of eye-catching touches. Small towns are dripping with Old West-meets-nuclear winter touches, government installations have an affective Area 51 flavor, and Route 66-like landmarks, such as a giant dinosaur statue, keep things interesting. Additionally, a look-and-touch approach is being taken with these presentation-pushing structures littering the dilapidated landscape. That giant dino, for example, doubles as a sniper's nest, allowing squatters to sit in its mouth, take cover behind its choppers, and pick off wasteland wanderers with ease. There's also a town that hosts a rickety old wooden roller coaster as its centerpiece. And again, this is an item that can be traversed or used to complement your strategic combat options. Also, I didn't get to see these areas during my demo, but the developers are promising plenty of surprises on the Vegas strip and at Hoover Dam.

So the time between selecting “start game” and arriving at that trademark “the world is my oyster” moment is much less trying, but better than that, it’s a much more attractive sort of mollusc. I was blown away by the ruined desert landscape of Capital Wasteland – for the first ten minutes, after which I got a hankering for something different to look at. Having escaped the devastation of a ground-zero hit, New Vegas delivers a much more varied and interesting environment.

The few interiors I saw, inside a mountain communications base and a military facility, deviated markedly from the endless corridor feel of subways and blasted urban ruins. Outside, the horizon is dotted with intact landmarks, thriving vegetation, and dramatic rock formations. The two towns we visited, both open to the wider environment rather than locked into their own cells, were like real world small towns in close proximity – sharing certain design similarities, but each with a distinct look of their own.

The designers are going to greater lengths to give the companions personalities and back stories. The one I got to see was Raul, a feisty ghoul being held captive by a cross-dressing super mutant named Tabitha, who was herself protected by the nightkin, a stealthy breed of super mutant that can turn itself nearly invisible. Whether or not you enlist Raul's help--and he did seem quite capable with a firearm--in typical Fallout fashion, it was possible to more creatively solve the nightkin problem by using a radio broadcast to pit the super mutants against each other rather than blasting your way blindly through every last one of them.

Tuesday - May 04, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Preview Flood #1

by Dhruin, 23:02

Bethsoft has been previewing their title lineup and, naturally, Fallout: New Vegas is a big part of their plans. This recent showing has resulted in a flood of new previews, which we'll break up into a couple of posts.

Obsidian has slipped into Fallout 3's clothes as comfortably as it once assumed KOTOR's mantle. New Vegas is technically and mechanically almost identical to the older game. As he walks us through a demo, creative director Chris Avellone reveals a number of tweaks and additions to Fallout 3's character development, conversational storytelling and the crunchy, stop-start hyper-violence of its VATS-powered combat. But the engine is plainly unchanged and to all intents and purposes, the game looks just the same.

It doesn't feel quite the same, however. It's three years later. The Mojave desert, though still identifiably post-holocaust, is nowhere near as ruined or bleak as the Capital Wasteland. Buildings stand whole, there's a pale wash of blue in the sky, scrubby vegetation clings to the landscape and some warmth and colour have seeped back into the scene. Although he doesn't take us there, Avellone teases us with glimpses of the still-standing Las Vegas Strip dominated by the huge Stratosphere tower, McCarran airport in the foreground.

Using a varmint rifle, we watched several overgrown geckos' heads explode with a few quick shots. There's a kill cam that can be set, which slows down the final shot and makes your kills feel more cinematic, but this can be turned off if you don't like seeing limbs fly in slow motion. Sawyer said that geckos were a favorite from Fallout 2 and that there will be tougher versions to fire at later in the game. The core controls, as well as the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System (VATS), remains mostly the same, and we later found out that special skill options have been added for melee attacks. Sawyer explained that there wasn't a lot of development time for New Vegas, and because a lot of people played Fallout 3, the developers didn't want to make any drastic changes--just improvements to the existing controls. He also said that aiming should be more responsive, reactive, and predictable. To discourage players from always aiming for the head, certain weapons will be more effective against limbs. At times, a red shield icon will appear to let you know that you're dealing less damage per shot and that it might be a good idea to switch targets to conserve precious bullets.

One of the most significant new gameplay mechanics in Fallout: New Vegas comes in the form of the companion wheel, which is designed for easy access to Companion Commands, including access to companion inventories and behavioral orders. If you want your companions to attack everything in sight, you can set them to be aggro. Or, on the flip side, you can have them be very docile.

From what I saw, this new radial menu system is a very easy to navigate and is much neater and quicker to access than the companion system in Fallout 3. In fact, the companions themselves will talk to you now and tell you if you've done something stupid, like arming a gun expert with a melee weapon. Companions also offer benefits to you in the form of perks, so you'll want to choose carefully when picking a buddy to go exploring with you.

Monday - May 03, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Mini Roundup

by Dhruin, 11:16

Here's a small collection of Fallout: New Vegas items, courtesy of Omega. Both Kotaku and Joystiq have similar articles discussing Hardcore Mode and the customisable weapons, which seems to have been a PR focus lately.

IGN has a video interview with J.E. Sawyer, who we don't see in front of a camera all that often. Josh discusses the Companion Wheel, weapon mods and reputations. No footage of the game is used but they do use screenshots and concept art.

Imagine that there is an amount of damage that armor directly subtracts from damage... a "threshold" of damage, if you will. While a small percentage of damage may get through even the thickest armor, damage threshold can effectively neutralize a lot of small arms. Fallout 1 and 2 used numerical feedback to let the player know when their weapons weren't doing any damage. In F3 and F:NV, the player only sees enemy health meters that represent a percentage of total health rather than an exact value. This makes it difficult to tell how effective an enemy's armor is (as opposed to the target simply having a ton of health). In F:NV, the red shield appears next to a target's health meter when you hit it for damage that is equal to or less than the target's damage threshold. A HUD-colored shield appears next to the player's health meter when the player is hit for damage equal to or less than the player's damage threshold.

If you haven't figured it out by now, my first look at Fallout: New Vegas was rather extensive, and it did a great job of showing off just how massive the game is. In addition to the opening town of Goodsprings, I also got a look at Primm (a real-life town that includes a roller-coaster), Novak, Black Mountain and the Helios 1 Power Plant. Along the way I got a look at several quests that ranged in complexity from simple Gecko hunts, to sniper defenses inside the mouth of a huge Dinky the Dinosaur statue, to giant set pieces that involved turning solar plants into massive solar weapons.

The most interesting part of the watching the quests play out came in the explanation of the extended system of notoriety and karma. Once again, you're free to be as nice or nasty as you please and your overall karma level will reflect it. At the same time, each faction or town you come across will react to your reputation you have with it. Help out the Brotherhood of the Steel and they might give you some protection or let you inside a locked down training camp. Piss off Caesar's Legion and they might send a hitman your way. Smaller towns might simply give you discounts…or tribute. With this system you're free to be both good and evil, shaping the way the world reacts to you along the way and ultimately affecting the outcome of your game.

Next up is The Escapist (thanks, Omega), who have a more spoiler-filled walkthrough of what they saw, although they also have comments from J.E. Sawyer:

One of the new features in New Vegas about which Obsidian is most proud (and by which hardcore fans are most intrigued) is Hardcore Mode. Hardcore Mode does a number of things, not the least of which is that in it, ammunition has weight, forcing you to carefully consider how much ammo you carry and of what types.

"Hardcore Mode is something you can enable at the beginning of the game," says Sawyer. "It's mostly for players that are more hardcore that have played through all of Fallout 3 and want something that's a little more challenging. Most noticeably, it changes how healing works. Healing happens over time. You cannot just rest to heal your broken limbs. You have to have a doctor's bag or go see a doctor."

Hardcore Mode can be enabled or disabled at any point in the game but there will, of course, be an achievement for playing the game the entire way through in Hardcore.

The change in the handling of ammo will have a great impact on how the game is played, particularly since New Vegas adds a vast number of new weapons and weapon types to the already impressive Fallout 3 arsenal.

The V.A.T.S. system from Fallout 3 is returning in New Vegas, which allows you to freeze the action and strategically target specific enemies and their individual parts. A new upgrade to V.A.T.S. adds special attacks with unique effects to melee weapons. For example, a golf club weapon called the 9 Iron has a special attack that can potentially knock enemies off their feet. If getting up close and personal isn't your thing, New Vegas still has plenty to keep you satisfied. New Vegas features twice as many firearms as Fallout 3, including ridiculously powerful weapons like a rapid-fire grenade launcher and the Helios One orbital laser. You can even customize your weapons with scopes, larger magazines, and more.

There are other tweaks too, which make this new Fallout more of a refined, deeper experience, like the ability to modify weapons with custom parts, or use all your core skills to influence conversations. Obsidian have modified the old chat system to make influencing people seem more natural. So, for example, if you have high stats in a specific skill, the conversation options that appear on screen will be clear and well informed. In other words, you’ll know what you’re talking about. Try to use a skill with lower stats, and your dialogue will sound vague, like you’re BSing it. Which, of course, you are.

Thursday - April 15, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Mini Roundup

by Dhruin, 21:50

Here's a handful of Fallout New Vegas and related items. First, a preview at OXM that covers the same ground as earlier articles, stepping through the opening moments:

After chatting up the locals, you trigger the “Ghost Town Firefight” quest. And with a name like that, guess what you’ll be doing? It seems the Powder Gangers — a band of outlaws who’ve stolen the town’s powder kegs — are set to attack Goodsprings and loot it, and now you’re tasked with recruiting as many of the townsfolk as possible to defend it. Or you could partner up with the Powder Gangers instead and burn the whole damn place to the ground. Your call.

It's a pretty widely-held opinion that the animations in Fallout 3 aren't really as good as they should be - for moving around, non-verbal communication, and for fighting. It's not just for the enemies, but for the main character as well; in fact, some modders have tried their hand at fixing the problem, with only limited success - it turns out that the moddability of the GameBryo engine doesn't extend to the animation system very well. Still, the problem remains - everything from running to jumping and firing weapons in FO3 does feel a bit wooden, just like they did with Oblivion back in 2006, and while that might have been acceptable four years ago, it's not anymore. Obsidian would do well to put the effort in to re-animate pretty much everything if they can, including the enemies from FO3 that will be reappearing in New Vegas (like the Super Mutants).

Put simply, I manage the production of Fallout: New Vegas. In practice, that means managing a small team of producers that in turn manage the five cross-discipline teams of developers responsible for creating the game. [We have broken the team into smaller sub-teams, each focused on a specific goal each milestone. Incidentally, these teams are all named after items found in the Fallout universe: Team Buffout, Fancy(lads), Mentats, Nuka, and Psycho.] I manage two of the teams myself and coordinate with the rest of my production crew in a relatively organic manner. My primary job is to see that Josh’s [Josh Sawyer, Project Director/Lead Designer] vision is executed to the fullest extent possible while staying within scope.

Tuesday - April 06, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Viral Marketing?

by Dhruin, 12:22

Maybe - and maybe not. But it's interesting, anyway. Omega dropped us a line about Duck and Cover noticing articles at IGN and then Joystiq about a mysterious marketing ploy. Seems several sites received an unmarked memory stick with a Word .doc and an audio file. Joystiq impressively pieced together the clues to end up at www.gknova6.com, which has some imagery that might be evocative of Fallout. Spying a Maryland (they think) postmark, they surmise Bethsoft plans something for Fallout: New Vegas soon. On the other hand, word is some Call of Duty sites also received it. *shrug* See what you think for yourself.

Monday - March 15, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Sightseeing Screens

by Dhruin, 08:14

Games Radar has an article titled Sightseeing in Fallout: New Vegas, offering a visual tour of a handful of major landmarks. Ultimately, there's a couple of new screens and concept arts - including a shot of a snip positioned in the dino statue's mouth.

Character creation is virtually identical to Fallout 3, with cosmetic changes like the Gene Projector being replaced by ReflectionTM, "You're SPECIAL!" by Vit-o-Matic machine and GOAT by a psychological test

The local super mutants are pretty tough and will keep you from wandering aimlessly in the early portions of the game - they tend to be tougher even than deathclaws

The box on the first page of the preview names Bethesda as both the publisher and the developer, while the article text itself gives due credit to Obsidian and discusses the devs' work on Fallout, Fallout 2 and Van Buren.

Chris Avellone: "It's a very amusing location design-wise. Vegas is like a whole city-wide amusement park. We can play on different themes, different styles. It's fun for the artists, it's fun for the designers... I don't know how much fun it's going to be for the programmers"

J.E. Sawyer: "The Karma system is mostly the same as in Fallout 3, but checked less often. Mostly we rely on reputation, because that's what people know. Karma is just a general indicator of how much of a sonofabitch you are. If you murder people in secret, your reputation doesn't go down because no on knows you did anything, so you can maintain a good reputation but your karma has tanked really heavily. Karma does influence some things, but reputation is usually what most people in the world base their opinions of you on."

Avellone: "We recognized that one of the strengths of Fallout 3 was that so much of the game revolved everything around Washington, D.C. That's your signature city. And to be honest, adventuring in post-apocalyptic D.C. is interesting. You're like, OK, I get it. I know what D.C. is like in the real world, I'd like to see what it's like in the real world when mutants are running around in the streets.So, if we have a western version of Fallout 3, what's a key signature city that people will immediately gt when they hear the title. And also, what's interesting to us? So individually, Vegas came up for a number of people without a community discussion about it. That kept coming up. So we said, OK, if within this small sample group that city keeps coming up, and we understand why, that's the city to use."

Weapons: picture of a hunting rifle included. Available modifications are scope, larger magazine and a 3rd one for faster load between shots.

Weapons: picture of a normal and a unique 9mm Pistol. Shown mods: scope and magazine enlargement. One gun shown with both scope and enlarged magazine.

Weapons: The unique pistol has a unique skin, engravings and a picture of Virgin Mary on the grip. This could mean that every unique weapon has its own skin. "These rare guns not only look UNIQUE, but have unique properties."

Weapons: Concept art of a guy in the trenchoat from the teaser wielding a Fallout 3-style minigun (It's a little bit smaller though)

Goodsprings: When you leave the Powder Ganger Quest unsolved, you'll encounter them later when they are more powerful.

Goodsprings: You can convince Mayor Trudi to ambush the Powder Gangers with a sufficient sneak skill.

Some choices you make during the game reveal their consequences far later.

Wednesday - February 17, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Preview @ USA Today

In the alternate-history video game Fallout: New Vegas, coming to Xbox 360, PS3 and Windows PCs this fall (no price and not yet rated), the Las Vegas Strip and surrounding area in 2280 bear the effects of a nuclear holocaust more than 200 years earlier during a great war between the United States and China.

The mystery is, who are you in this nuclear wasteland?

At the outset of the game, your character is shot and left in a shallow grave in the desert, lifted of the package you were entrusted with delivering. A robot digs you out and takes you to a local caregiver, Doc Mitchell, who nurses you back to health.

"Unlike the previous Fallouts, where you start in a vault and you are a vault dweller, this one starts with a curveball," says Pete Hines of Bethesda Softworks.

1. New areas will open up for the player depending on your reputation 2. Not all weapons have mods 3. "You only buy mods from stores" - once bought you highlight the weapon you want to add it to in your inventory and apply it 4. They will cost you a lot of money 5. Hardcore is seperate to difficulty 6. Hardcore is more of a mechanical shift as opposed to just bumping up hp - he compares it to Ninja Gaiden 7. There is a dehydration meter 8. Dehydration meter will have impact o the player (most likely drop in stats) 9. Being out in the desert in the day, as opposed to night, will have a greater effect on your need for food and water

The Nevada area is less affected by the nuclear war, so it has plant life, relatively unspoiled houses, and in visual presentation has saturated colours and a bright sky.

There's a tutorial (led by a character named Sunny who looks a lot like Moira Brown), but unlike Fallout 3, it's optional, so you can hit the open game in 5 minutes from starting.

NCR and Caesar's Legion are the confirmed faction, article assumes Brotherhood of Steel will be in but they weren't not mentioned in the presentation.

"In New Vegas it's all about the player examining the ideologies of the various groups that are controlling the area and supporting one over the others," explains Sawyer. "Each of the ideologies will have something good that you can relate to, but will also have massive flaws."

When asked about PS3's Fallout 3 being inferior to the others and if New Vegas will do better, Obsidian devs make no promises but indicate it was a learning process and they're working with all 3 platforms and all have problems.

The New Vegas strip is still in construction but will have gambling, variety shows and concerts.

Electrical power is key in the faction struggle.

Radiation is still a problem, there's a nuclear test site to explore north of New Vegas.

The soundtrack will blend "Rat Pack style tunes with more Western numbers".

New Vegas doesn't tell a single-player story, but weaves decision into the gameworld and gives you greater power to influence things than Fallout 3 did.

On top of adding back in geckos, New Vegas has a whole new type of animal: mutated mountain rams called Big Horners.

As part of its world-exclusive cover feature, PSM3 played an extensive demo of New Vegas. The mag reported that it was 'apparent that Obsidian are much more comfortable behind the keyboard than the team that made Fallout 3 and, before that, Oblivion. The scripting is wittier, the characters more distinct.'

This is how it works. Each skill-based dialogue option has two different texts: one for high skill (which will result in success) and one for low skill (which will result in failure). If you do not meet the required threshold, you see the latter.

Friday - February 05, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Cover Articles Soon

After yesterday’s unveil of the Fallout: New Vegas teaser trailer we wanted to make sure you knew about some of the “first looks” publications are getting of the game.

Next week in the UK be on the lookout for New Vegas cover stories in OXM, PSM3, and PC Gamer. All three publications will be on newsstands on February 11th.

Stateside, PC Gamer subscribers can expect the New Vegas cover story next week (on newsstands on March 2nd). Meanwhile, both OXM and PlayStation: The Official Magazine will have features on the game – subscribers can expect to see these later in the month.

February 4, 2010 (Rockville, MD) – Bethesda Softworks®, a ZeniMax® Media company, today announced that Fallout®: New Vegas™, the next chapter in the critically-acclaimed Fallout franchise, will be available in Fall 2010. The game is currently in development at Obsidian Entertainment for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system, and Games for Windows. The first trailer, which provides new insight into the game, is now available at fallout.bethsoft.com.

Fallout: New Vegas, the follow-up to Fallout® 3 – the 2008 Game of the Year – brings this beloved franchise to a location only Fallout could do justice: Vegas. Fallout: New Vegas takes all the action, humor, and post-apocalyptic grime and grit of this legendary series, and raises the stakes.

To view the Fallout: New Vegas trailer and for more information on the game, please visit the official Fallout site: fallout.bethsoft.com. Fallout: New Vegas will be featured in magazine cover stories around the world in the month of February. Check the official site for updated details.

“We are pleased to be teaming up with NAMCO BANDAI Partners to distribute one of our flagship titles. Fallout: New Vegas builds upon the immersive gaming experience that made Fallout 3 the 2008 Game of the Year. We are extremely happy to be able to offer Fallout fanswith another premium gaming experience”, said Sean Brennan, Managing Director, ZeniMax Europe Ltd. “NAMCO BANDAI Partners have a terrific European distribution network and this partnership will help establish Fallout: New Vegas as one of the premier games of 2010”.

“Reaching this agreement for Fallout: New Vegas underlines the excellent distribution channels NAMCO BANDAI Partners has across Europe”, said Alberto González Lorca, VP 3rd Parties for NAMCO BANDAI Partners S.A.S. “Working closely with Bethesda Softworks we are thrilled to be involved with the Fallout brand and help launch this exciting and richly deep game”.

Fallout: New Vegas will be launched in Europe in 2010. For more information on Bethesda Softworks, visit www.bethsoft.com. For more information on NAMCO BANDAI Partners S.A.S., please visit www.namcobandaipartners.com.

On a related note, Blend Games has a wish list for FO: New Vegas. There are odd items in there but others would certainly be on my list:

A fixed version of V.A.T.S.

As a nod to the series' turn-based roots, Fallout 3 employs a combat mechanic called V.A.T.S.. In the middle of a fight, you're able to pause the action and queue up shots at specific points on an enemy. Rather than complementing the real-time FPS-like combat of the game, V.A.T.S. completely overwhelms it. By the end of the game you'll have enough Action Points to almost exclusively use V.A.T.S. in battle. It's just so much easier and more ammo efficient than real-time combat. V.A.T.S. isn't a bad feature but it needs to be tweaked so that you can only use it a handful of times per fight. Or perhaps it could be altered so that, say, aiming for a headshot is more complicated than simply selecting an enemy head and clicking on it. Maybe put a time limit on selecting your shots or make the damage scale with how quickly you queue them up?

Monday - January 04, 2010

Fallout: New Vegas - Game Informer Rumours [Updated]

by Dhruin, 20:25

Are we finally going to see the Fallout: New Vegas reveal? NMA has an unconfirmed summary of a rumoured upcoming Gamer Informer feature. Background stories (similar to Dragon Age's Origins), tweaks to Fallout 3's version of SPECIAL and vehicles are all discussed. Here's an excerpt:

- Similar to Dragon Age: Origins, at character creation the player can select from different background stories. The first few hours of the game are different depending on which background you choose, and you get some unique perks based on your background when the main game begins.

- One background story is shown, Chinese Agent. The background story takes place before the bombs fell. The player is part of a team of Crimson Dragoons infilitrating Hoover Dam. You manage to sneak through the Americans' defenses, set explosives, and head to an extraction point, but your escape is cut off by American soldiers in Power Armor. The player and other survivors of the Crimson Dragoons take refuge in a cave in the canyons, where they commit hari kari with cyanide capsules. The player about to do the same when the bombs fall. The background story ends an indeterminate time later, when the player exits the cave, removes his helmet, and sees his ghoulish reflection in the waters of the Colorado River.

Update:VG247 points out a tweet from Game Informer's Andrew Reiner, denying this is their next cover:

Fallout: New Vegas is NOT Game Informer’s next cover

...and NMA themselves have updated the piece, saying "we've all been trolled, lol".

Wednesday - July 15, 2009

Fallout: New Vegas - What to Expect @ IGN

by Dhruin, 00:06

IGN has a piece titled What to Expect From Fallout: New Vegas (and labeled a "preview") that speculates based entirely on existing information. It introduces Obsidian for those that might think Fallout = Bethsoft but, otherwise, simply states the obvious:

Whether or not Fallout: New Vegas uses the same game engine as Fallout 3 remains to be seen, but it seems likely. Putting together a game of the size and scope of Fallout is no easy task. Building a new engine and set of game mechanics on top of it might make the ambitious 2010 release window impossible, though we don't know how long Obsidian has been at work on this project. Even if the team did have the time, Bethesda might be unwilling to let Obsidian make drastic changes to the new Fallout formula. Fallout 3 was a massive hit and the group now has a successful franchise to manage. Fears of driving it into the ground or confusing new fans might take any big changes off the table.

Monday - April 20, 2009

Fallout: New Vegas - Interview @ Shacknews

Shacknews has the first interview on Fallout: New Vegas, with Pete Hines saying they "tried very hard not to put much in the way of parameters on them":

Shack: What has Bethesda's attitude been in terms of allowing Obsidian freedom to create their own Fallout game?

Pete Hines: I think we tried very hard not to put much in the way of parameters on them. To let them kind of come up with the idea. So we didn't go to them and say, we want a game that is set here, and--we didn't do that. We said, "What would you do with it? If we were going to do this, what would you guys like to do?"

Shack: So you asked them for a pitch, as opposed to pitching them a project.

Pete Hines: Correct, correct. And honestly, generally speaking, that's how it works best, which is: you've gotta have people who are really vested in the idea that it's their creation. "This is what makes us excited. If we could do this, this is what we would want to do."

You may help them mold or frame that, but if that's what they're excited about, then that's what you should do. As opposed to, I come up with something that would be cool, and you go to them and they go, "Oh, okay. Well, sure." You're just not necessarily going to get the same passion or excitement from the team. And those are the guys who need to be the most excited about it, because that's what they're going to go into the office and be creative on and make for the foreseeable future.

But it was good. I think we were all on the same page in terms of the kinds of things that we wanted to do, and what it could be. And yeah, so now I want to play it.

According to an article from MCV linked at Blue's, the game will use the Fallout 3 engine but there doesn't seem to be an original source for this with commenters at Blues saying this was not mentioned at the original press event, so take this with a grain of salt at this early stage.